There is an attitude these days of lionising elders especially when they have managed to avoid falling into decrepitude. This is especially true about women who “look good for their age”. What does that mean anyway? I saw a photo of B.K.S. Iyengar posted on Facebook praising him for looking pretty all right at 93. Aged yoga teachers are often singled out for kudos when they have achieved ripe old age in reasonably good health of body and mind. My octogenarian friend Collyn likes to say he is good for any age. I stumbled upon the above photo taken for a magazine article 18 years ago, called the “Truth About Beauty”. I’m amused by how I answered the question, “How do you feel about getting older?”
Undoubtedly I will look older but I think that because we are influenced by our thoughts, age can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. I feel like I’m part of some big experiment and nobody knows how it will turn out.
Well, uh, yes. Now I’m 67, and so far what I’ve learned from the march of time is that “inside oldness, I’m still the same – maybe more so”, as Jane Fonda has said in a TED talk. The good thing about getting older is that you’ve been given time to sort through your closet to get rid whatever is unneeded or worn-out. You start to get down to what really matters. It makes us wiser when we reflect on the experiences we’ve had to glean what there was to learn. Quoting Ms. Fonda again, “We become what we might have been.” I enjoyed being 52, but I couldn’t imagine that I would look back and see myself as young then. Ultimately, old or young doesn’t really matter so much as how we relate to the age we are. *Brigette Bardot
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