If you are in midlife, I’m sure you have noticed by now how advertising, marketing and media are all geared towards youth. I believe we are about to see a change in all that as boomers age and the ratios of young to old begin to shift. In the meantime, so many of us keep exploring ways to stay young., We exercise, perhaps more than ever before, in order to get back in shape – which for many of us means finding the body we had ten or twenty years ago., Many are using medical or even surgical procedures that help tighten, firm, mold and sculpt their bodies. Women, in particular, color any hint of grey or silver and both men and women are adding hair where it has diminished and even removing hair where it is now appearing. We seem to be fixated on any possibility that promises a return to younger days.
Is this wrong?
Well, I don’t believe in right or wrong, per se, but, I think it’s important to look at why we are doing all these things and to be careful that we aren’t living in denial of the process of aging itself.
Being old is quite relative; when one is five years old, a teenager seems out of reach, and someone who is thirty or forty seems ancient indeed. Some people tend to carry that youthful relativity for a long time. When we reach the magic number we have attached to the concept of being old, we suddenly begin to think and feel old and unfortunately equate it to a lack of vitality, or uselessness and even our own mortality.
What to do instead
Instead, it would serve us well to learn to embrace the physical, mental, and spiritual changes that are part of the natural occurrence of aging. It’s time to approach age with new definitions that don’t try to hold us in adolescence. It’s important to learn to alter the labels we have created that identify the concept getting older. Instead, we can learn to respect the time we have spent on this earth and the very valuable life lessons we have learned, which have, hopefully endowed us with wisdom. How much better it would feel to accept ourselves and not fear a wrinkle, lost hair or extra pound. And, perhaps, most of all, it is time to get to the truth that the physical body is a transitional vehicle while the spirit alone is everlasting.
As humans, we all will undergo many changes. We already have been since birth. Midlife is a time, not to bring on fear or denial but rather a time to embrace these transitions with great understanding and even welcoming. It’s time to expect and even demand the reward of joy that is our privilege because of the work we have done the knowledge we have amassed through the experiences of living.
Isn’t it time to redefine ageing? I hope you’ll join me in this quest.
