Isn't it ironic that the subject of beauty and age doesn't itself suffer from 'getting old’?
My cat is old, my dogs are getting old, (my husband is older than I am though not by much) and I've got a date with 50 in late '09.
But, the roles of beauty and age, no matter what we feel about them, will have their day on our personal stage for better or for worse. Of course, up to a certain age the issue is merely beauty. Over enough time the issue blossoms into the double barrel shot-gun of beauty and age. Beauty is by its very nature a deceptive thing. I think of it as a Misty-vapor Seductress who speaks only in double en tundra so as to avoid Truth, and laughs incessantly at everyone.
But when she rest on us lightly, (you know those times when you really do feel beautiful), we fall in love with her. Clever isn’t she?
Age on the other hand is the enemy of beauty, but perhaps not for the reasons you would think. Age has her own culture, her own pace, and her own set of rules which will often undermine beauty’s power to hold her victims hostage.
Age challenges her often reluctant students to find true meaning of their lives, their true gifts, and their ultimate contribution to the young. The earlier in life we learn to follow this muse the weaker the Seductress' power over us. This is where age becomes wisdom and the mystery of this can and is often found among even the young. Perhaps Age is a final chance to become wise if we managed to resist it in our youth.
Some people have more beauty it seems, and because the world responds to it so instinctively they cannot help but learn to navigate by it. The rest of us balance our attractiveness with other values. None of us wants to roll our eyes at beautiful people. And in my experience of beautiful people they don’t want to apologize for how they look either. Why should they; no one should. Unless, of course they look like I do right now in my housecoat and slippers. Heck, I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet and it’s already 1:53PM. (I love my work!)
I have my own silly battles with both beauty and age. I take them a lot less seriously than I had imagined I would before I turned 49. But I’ll tell you a pet peeve I tend to shake my head at.
It’s when younger women than I betray a palpable dread that getting older is a kind of failure, or an undesirable circumstance. It baffles me:
1. That they appear to believe that ageing is a program option that only silly old people forget to un-default.
2. That they are saying this to someone who is clearly older than they are, and so I wonder what exactly I appear to be in their mind.
3. That we women have allowed this kind of absolutely useless age obsessing in our culture.
(I don’t mean to set the shame of blame with us; however, you know it’s really up to us if things are ever going to change).
May I suggest that we remind our younger sisters, that nightmare or not, when speaking to us, who clearly have survived that horror, (and are, alas, becoming even more horrible with every ticking moment …I jest) that they reserve that attitude to share with others who are younger than them. Meeow!!! Ssssssst!
Secondly It might be good for us all to increase the number of friends who are significantly older than ourselves. I'm pretty sure this has been a factor in a surprising excitment I am experiencing about actually turning fifty.
Check out my group on Facebook: THE OFFICIAL MS NOT SO PERFECT 10 GROUP
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