So you think this is going to be a downer topic? Not for me ! I love getting older. I enjoy being old. I value the freedom it brings. Freedom that I didn't always give myself in youth or middle age. And that freedom was completely misunderstood by me then. I say 'give myself' because it was typically unwarranted fear that kept me from going forward in all aspects of my life. That was my experience.
Our media and cultural messages are not so favorable to aging. I hear the discounting casual comments about 'old people.' Old women are made fun of on TV programs. That is too bad. Being closed to all the stages and strata of human life is a great loss for those who discount. (In my view, discounting any part of the world's population is a huge loss for the close-minded.) **The only 'plight' of aging that I see, might be how we allow others' views of us to get in.
Why do we get so many messages that aging is not okay? That aging is a disease to be treated with surgery and medications? The word from the media is that aging is a big problem and not fun at all. I disagree. (This is not to discount very real illness that unfortunately comes to many folks, and may one day befall me as well! )
Maybe what is not addressed is a very real, human fear of dying?
I wonder if that primal fear of not existing anymore causes us to strive to stay young, wrinkle and sag free, in hopes of staving off the inevitable visit to the box in the dirt??
I don't know ?
But, you may ask, who wants wrinkles on the face, or hands that show tendons and veins? Who will love me when I am old and gray? Who will want me if my skin is 'heading south' along with my ....well, you know :D
It is often implied, in doctor shows and women's magazines, that if we survive into old age, one SHOULD look and feel like a 30 year-old. Nothing wrong with staying fit and healthy along the way, just that one's body....my body, and those of many I know.....changes significantly. I am grateful that I am healthy at this stage of my life. Yes, for that I am immensely thankful.
Desiring to be the way we were at 25 or 40 is not realistic. Men go through late-life changes too, but they seem to be more gradual and begin at a later age. For women, especially after menopause, very real, and often sudden, changes happen. It can be sudden and shocking, or gradual and...just as shocking! The FEAR of not being acceptable in the eyes of others is just not worth the energy. There too many are important things to do !
For me, the pleasure of just letting go of the hang-ups that bolstered my life in former years is worth all the wrinkles. Wrinkles are proof I smiled a whole lot. My thinning skin lets me see what I am made of inside ...literally and figuratively. As for my gray hair, I always say I earned everyone of them and when I look in the mirror, I see who I really am today, not who I was 30 years ago.
Of course, do what feels right for your own health and well-being. That may mean taking hormones at menopause, or getting wrinkles botoxed. Those options are just not my choice....and that works for me.
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