DEFYING YOUR AGE

Our culture is obsessed with youth. This is not news. I believe that any thinking person over the age of 30 would agree that this is something we need to change. However, I would propose that even those who recognize this imbalance could perhaps use a focus adjustment as well.

I have a friend who recently posted on Facebook that she had been accused of trying to “hide” her true age by how she dresses and acts. Her response to this was quite understandable … she first “outed” herself by declaring her correct chronological age, and then defended herself by saying she’s never tried to mislead anyone about how old she is. The responses of her friends and supporters shared a basic theme – that she is beautiful and doesn’t look her age and shouldn’t worry about it.

That’s very nice, but it still places the emphasis on the wrong part of the problem, in this writer’s opinion. To try to comfort someone by telling her she “doesn’t look her age” is to play into the myth that younger is better. We tell a 40-year-old she doesn’t look a day over 30, or we assure a 55-year-old grandmother that she sure doesn’t look like a grandmother. While these are apparently positive and supportive statements at first blush, the reality is that they imply there’s something wrong with “looking like” a 40-year-old or a grandmother; and further, that there even IS such a thing. What does a 40-year-old look like? What does a grandmother look like?

And WHY do we blindly accept the presumption that it’s better to be young? Why do we deify youth in this culture? I purport that this has come about largely as a result of some very successful marketing strategies used by just about every advertiser in the world. After all, marketing is based on the premise of supply and demand. You can either perceive a demand and supply what’s needed to fulfill it, or you can CREATE a demand, supply the promised fulfillment, and get rich, rich, RICH!

If I can convince you that who you are, how you are, is unacceptable, then the sky’s the limit as to the products I can sell you to make yourself once more acceptable. And since every human is growing older every day of life from birth to death, what better lie to sell than that younger is better? We’re told we should strive for skin that’s as soft as a baby’s bottom; a face with no lines or wrinkles; eyelashes that are long, dark, and thick; a figure resembling that of a pre-pubescent boy; and for God’s sake we must NEVER let our natural hair color show!

Why? Why is baby-butt skin better? How can eyelashes make you more desirable? And who said being pencil-thin is the way women should look, even if that were possible to achieve? THE ADVERTISERS WHO WANT YOU TO BUY INTO THE MYTH SO YOU’LL BUY THEIR PRODUCTS, THAT’S WHO!

My real-world, reality-on-the-ground, not-made-for-television life experience has shown me things that are quite contrary to what the advertisers want you to believe.

One of my best friends met her husband when they were both in their late teens. They’ve been married for 40+ years now, and a few years ago he told me of the night they met. He saw a beautiful 17-year-old across a crowded room (literally!) and fell madly in love at first sight. He told his buddy standing next to him, “That’s the girl I’m gonna marry.” He described to me in painstaking detail – lo, these almost 40 years later – what she was wearing, how her hair was fixed, and who she was talking to. That in itself was heartwarming and incredible, especially coming from this outwardly gruff, car-racing redneck of a man; but what followed brought tears to my eyes. He looked into the kitchen at his now-50-something-year-old 20-pounds heavier wife in jeans and a stained sweatshirt, no make-up, unkempt hair, her hands in dishwater, and his eyes grew misty as he said, “Every time I look at her, that’s how I still see her, and I fall in love all over again.”

My own grandfather, twice-widowed, fell madly, passionately, head-over-heels, giddy-as-a-teenager in love when he was 80 years old. Always the strong, silent type, characteristically a man of very few words, he gushed effusively about his beautiful lady love, who he married and remained mad for until the day he passed from this earth ten years later. He thought she was gorgeous and sexy and amazing. She was also 80.

You see, the heart’s vision gets there a split second before the eyes’ view registers, and THIS is what we are actually responding to, albeit usually unbeknownst to us. But alas, we are spirits travelling through this plane of existence trapped inside these temporal bodies, and as such we tend to interpret our experiences and perception through the lens of form. We are attracted to, or repelled by, someone we just met and we attribute those feelings to something physical about that person, when in reality we are feeling the energy that person is emitting and THAT is what we’re reacting to.

Case in point? We can all think of someone – a celebrity or someone we know personally – who at first glance impressed us as not very attractive, but who, once we started to know them, became beautiful. And conversely, everyone knows someone who is aesthetically pleasing, but whose insides reveal an ugly person.

I am here and now calling for you, the people, to stand with me as we rise up and start a revolution! Let us no longer swallow the flavorless, unfulfilling pap being shoved down our throats by marketers. Let’s rip the scales from our eyes and start to “see” with our hearts. Let’s recognize that there is beauty in every person, and that it’s not connected to complexion or eyelash length or hair color or even – and perhaps most importantly – a person’s age. Let’s broaden our definition of beauty to include the place where beauty originates – in the heart and soul of a person. And most of all, let’s start to see, acknowledge, and proudly claim our OWN beauty. Let’s be the ones who teach the rest of the world that form is temporal, but spirit is ageless. And beautiful. ALWAYS!