When you're young, you're inexperienced, insecure, reckless, confused, hormonal, and generally not brave enough to use your youth to do the impossible.
When we look back at our lives as we age, we often regret the things we didn't do, not the things we did.
As we age, many still carry the insecurities and desire to be accepted and even adored or envied, so we fight the process of an aging face, health, body. We're in a race, a competition for status and achievement.
Just take a look at the Real Housewives. These poor ladies become stitched aging Barbie dolls to become a plastic image of what they were when they were dewy and young. After all, don't women get discarded with age? Overlooked? Set aside? If your status was a trophy wife, you begin to panic at the realization Mr. Money Bags can get a younger version of you.
And men, they reap the trials of having been workaholics so that they find their bodies failing, growing soft, getting diabetes, having trouble with erections....Younger workers enter out of college and suddenly the youngsters' naive ideas of how business should be run end up pushing aside older men's experience and value.
I was very proud that I age looking a lot younger than I am, but I also refuse to utilize any surgeries, fillers, or paralyzing shots to my visage. I was known as a queen of selfies, my face extremely expressive and the biggest brightest smile. Then, Bell's palsy struck and my face became paralzyed - both sides!
It was devastating emotionally and I fell into a deep depression and anxiety, almost agoraphobic behavior as I was utterly devastated for anyone to see me, especially when I try to eat in public. My whole face would contort and keeping food in my mouth was difficult with paralyzed lips.
This humbling event had me shifting out of forever youthful and into survival mode. Survival mode was, "this is my face, deal with the resting bitch expression."
When you liberate from the competitiveness of youth and its focus - find a mate, succeed, be the envy of everyone, you find you accept an aging face, crepy skin, and morning aches and pains.
Then, when you take yourself out of the rat race, you begin to rebel in other ways. "I don't care what you think of me, I'm going to get a place on the beach and go barefoot," or "I'm going to get tattoos up and down my arm," or "I'm going to live in an RV and hit the road."
Whatever that thing was that would make you different than the crowd, now seems like the goal.
You were let free from a prison occupied by lemmings and now that you don't care what others think, you begin the real life.
Teens rebel and so do middle-agers and seniors. You know that saying, "if you can't beat them, join them?" Well, this is the opposite. "If you won't join them, beat them."
As my concerns about my value being physical, I started to think of other things I resented. Underwire bras, uncomfortable shoes, and coloring my hair.
I tested gray hair on me, as redheads go from red to an ugly faded yellowish tone to pure white. Of course, should I finally walk away from covering roots, I think I'd like to use pastel temporary colors underneath my long white hair, lots of bohemian braids and beads. It wouldn't be grandma's gray.
As you age, you have the ability to be eccentric and unique. You don't have to wear suits. You don't have to wear stilletos. You don't have to follow seasonal trends. You become a personality instead of a replication.
Dare to be irreplaceable, unique, and sure of who you are. Wear it decisions confidently. People that adhere to this age youthfully, are always relevant, often mentors and idols.
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