AGING - Why Do We Resent it?

Have you ever looked in the mirror and wondered who this older person is? Often our faces don’t match how we feel. A couple of years ago, after years of looking at myself to shave every morning I really looked and was shocked to see not my familiar face looking back at me but instead that of my Dad. Yikes.

I like Buddhist teaching because it tells us that we are merely on a journey— it tells us when we die we will be forgotten, our words will be forgotten, the people who loved us will remember us and maybe pass an occasional story onto relatives we’ll never meet on the mortal plain, but eventually those people will die off and soon we’re an asterisk on ancestry search.

Frightening?

No- enlightening.

We are like the river, thousands of droplets of water flowing through shifts and turns, we are racing by on our journey and rather than worrying about our legacy we should worry about being present in the now.

Why do we embrace youth and fear aging? Why do we get angry when our hair turns gray or our body struggles a bit more. Maybe a few years ago we could run up a flight of steps without a second thought and now we need the railing, or maybe even the elevator.

Look at what your body has done for you all these years and appreciate it. It’s served you since childhood games in the school yard up through high school sports and activities.

It doesn’t matter that the miles put on it cause wear, we cannot go back, but we can do the best we can to keep things working. We can live in the now and embrace what we can still do.

I feel for people who have let themselves go— it’s harder to get it back than it is to maintain it.

We are sure of who we are and we have nothing to prove after walking through decades of experiences.