The Battle of Anti-Aging
My love, I must tell you there is an insidious and brutal war that has been waged against you. It’s robbing us all of the wisdom of your years and shattering your heart with self-loathing.
Tell me again of the shock that arises when you catch an unsuspecting, un-staged glance at your raw reflection. The shame of your face in full light, exposed for the way it’s been etched daily by the things of this world. Then I can remind you that your skin has not betrayed you and show you instead the real deception.
I know you want to celebrate yourself, how far you have come, and who you have grown into along the way. But it’s no wonder that your heart keeps breaking, because there’s a war that’s been waged on the lines on your face and the tautness of your skin. Calling into question the weight of the wisdom that has accumulated, drop by drop over the years, that now pools in your eyes which are starting to surrender in a downward bow under the heft of that poise.
Anti-aging everything. In a frenzied effort to erase the lines of your living, you engage in the war on yourself and the beauty of what it is to grow older.
Oh, how we’ve all bought into and doubled down on this battle against the elements of time that cannot be won. We are validated in this fight everywhere we turn, anti-aging a $50.2 billion dollar a year industry.
To be “anti” is to oppose, to be against, to find an enemy in. So how are we to reconcile this war on aging with the truth and the beauty of what it is to live?
Please, my love, lay the battle down before the brilliance of your years is wiped from your face and the world is left to mitigate the loss from your extinction.