On Aging

Today I was rummaging around in my basket of hair products and found my anti-aging serum. Ha! I haven’t used it for months. It’s not going to keep me young at the bottom of a basket.

Speaking of aging, Paulina Porizkova was trending recently for posting a makeup-free selfie and an honest rant about getting older and the pressure to delay looking old for as long as possible. She’s 54. Like so many women our age, she struggles with saggy skin and the decision of when/whether to go gray. I love what she has to say ("I’ve changed my vision to gray hair being sexy and confident”), but her post still focuses on looks—how to embrace the appearance of our older faces and bodies—instead of how we think, act, and feel. I guess that’s a job hazard for a supermodel. Although, model or not, it truly is that glimpse in the mirror more than anything else that reminds us we are eternal beings housed in aging vessels.

From the book Hardwired: Finding the God You Already Know, by James W. Miller (Abingdon Press, 2013):

There is a petrifying moment that occurs when we are forty and, half-dressed, accidentally pass in front of the bedroom mirror. The turmoil comes from the inner sense of youth that seems to have gotten dislodged from our bodies. We don’t naturally feel the age that we are. I’ve heard a ninety-year-old look in a mirror, baffled, and quip “How am I this old?” This is because we are not hardwired for mortality. Our deepest instincts tell us that we are on a different timeline than the one we seem to be on. We were created to be eternal beings, and the aging process…takes us through the emotional experience of our bodies molting away from our souls.

Besides mirrors, nothing makes me feel the length of my years on earth quite like music. Ever heard a song and been immediately transported back in time ten, twenty, maybe forty years? Happened to me twice the other day. If nothing good is playing on the Sirius 80s or 90s stations, I’ll check in with the 70s and 60s. I recently did this and heard “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” followed immediately by “Michael Row the Boat Ashore.” I knew both songs very well in my single-digit years, but the latter transported me straight to second grade music class. Our music teacher took song requests, and Candy Bender ALWAYS asked to sing “Michael Row the Boat Ashore.” Other unforgettable music class gems were Orion is Arising , Green Green, and O Sinner Man. The remarkable thing is not that I remember these songs forty years later. It’s how they can make me feel the way I felt at that moment in time, as an eight-year-old. And it just feels so very long ago. A completely different lifetime and a different world.