Getting Older: Don’t Fear Father Time

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“The trick is to age honestly and gracefully and make it look great so that everyone looks forward to it. – Emma Thompson”

The start of the New Year is like having another birthday, and some people find it depressing.  The increasing numbers can’t be stopped, and, like Father Time, we continue to get older and older.

To avoid this potentially depressing state of mind, don’t base your self-concept on your good looks at 23, 33, or 53.  Our looks are constantly changing, and we begin to “age” the day we are born.

Father time continues to toll the bell, gravity takes over and you start to lose your waistline, your chin or your jawline, and wrinkles wreak havoc with your skin.

“Another birthday won’t cramp your style,” puns Phyllis Diller, “it just wrinkles your birthday suit a little.” And Miss Piggy advises smoothing your wrinkles out with a steamroller, but that is a little drastic to my way of thinking.

This dread anticipation of aging has vexed mankind since Eve tasted of the apple.  Despite experimentation-scientific or otherwise, no one has yet discovered the fountain of youth or a “youth restorative.”

Let’s face it, there is no “miracle cure” for this process we call “aging,” nor is there any way to stop expression lines from forming on your face, except of course to remain expressionless-a piece of advice you’ll often come across.

Personally, I’d rather see a lot of good healthy laugh lines and furrows o a face that has lived life, rather than a smooth surface that is stoic and devoid of all expression.

Society experienced a youth quake for the past several decades, a result of the baby Boom of the 1940s.  Those babies are now grown, and our feelings about aging just arent are what they used to be.

The old stereotypes of just what youth and beauty are “supposed” to be are being rejected, and people today do not look or act as old as people of the same age in yesteryear, a development most likely due to less physical work, improved transportation and greater access to cosmetic aids and even water.

I’d like to rephrase the standard one-liner, ‘you’re not getting older, you’re getting better” to instead say, “You’re getting older, all right, but in he process, you’re still getting better-and better!

If you’re 53, don’t try to look 33.  It just won’t work.  If you’re 53, make 53 look unbelievably great, like it’s the best time of your life.  Accept where you are on the calendar of life and enjoy it-wrinkles and all!  You earned every one of them, so wear them with pride!

The years may indeed wrinkle your skin, but to give up on life will wrinkle your soul.  Those “metallic years” may mean silver in your hair, and gold in your teeth, but they don’t always have to mean lead in your feet!  NO age or stage of life has a monopoly on beauty and being.

If you are dissatisfied with your looks or your life at the start of this New Year, do something to give a life to your looks and per chance a lift to your life-and I don’t mean a face-lift!

A couple of hints to help you get started; for the ladies go easy on the makeup. Less is better as we get older.  If it is overdone, it will just attract attention to the wrinkles that you’re trying to minimize.

Wear your hair in a soft, easy-to-care-for and face-framing style, and don’t assume that graying hair must be colored.

Wear classic clothes that are ageless, with just a tough of the trendy to keep you looking in touch with the world.  Obviously, extremely youthful clothes make an older person look even older, simply by extreme contrast.  Eliminate them!

And as long as health allows, get out there and get involved.  Walk and talk with young and old alike.  The more you do, the more you may be able to do.  We can’t afford to be afraid of Father Time and the future, for that’s where we’re going to spend the rest of our lives.[/vc_column_text][thb_gap height=”40″][/vc_column][/vc_row]