Taylor Was Right

Toxic agreements about aging I didn't realize I made / Thought Cookie: Edition 37, Vol 5.

Thought Cookie: Edition 37, Vol. 5

I’ve said this out loud a few times to friends in recent months and each time it has sounded utterly ridiculous.

Despite that, I can assure you it felt very true to me.

Prior to the last couple of years, I was apparently living under the delusion (not really knowing it was a delusion) that …

I would remain more or less the same-looking person as I aged.

I didn’t think as I aged I would appreciably change.

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Even as I write that, it doesn’t seem like a completely outlandish idea to me.

I am who I am, who I have always been.

I take good care of myself.

I exercise, I meditate, I move my body and stretch.

I employ a fair, but not excessive amount of creams and serums.

I use sunscreen.

I comb and fix my hair.

I pay attention to the way I style myself.

Without consciously knowing it, I did the math and decided that was enough to ensure the photographic evidence of me would reflect the same person I had always been.

I was confident that person was very consistent in appearance.

Then came some pretty big personal changes in my life.

Even though I know it happened more gradually, it felt like I woke up one morning and realized I did not look the same. That I had changed, was changing.

My reaction to this was a low-level panic that bubbled in my gut and threatened to make me crazy.

My first goal: undo this change. Employ tactics I had used in the past to restore myself to the way I wanted to be. Exercise. Sleep. Smart clothing choices. Reduce what I was eating.

Nothing worked. Not really.

My body didn’t respond the way I wanted it to. The way I expected it to.

I had the dawning realization that, despite what I wanted, my body had other imperatives. Angry, I bemoaned the fact that it felt like my body had betrayed me and was actively working against me.

I was stymied. Frustrated. Obsessed. Disappointed. Hateful toward myself.

All things that I railed against throughout my life. There I was, a victim to these intrusive thoughts.

I started going through my camera roll, trying to reconcile the person I was in those photos, then, with the person I saw staring back at me now.

(Though I only now realize this, I can see how similar those feelings were to those I had in early adolescence when my body was changing without my permission.)

I’ll spare you the details of discovering what was happening. I’ve come to realize, that isn’t the point.

Unbeknownst to me, I had bought into and made agreements some extremely consistent and inaccurate artificial constructs from our culture.

I agreed not to age.

(How crazy is that?)

In the deepest recesses of my mind, I had quietly and resolutely agreed to the following:

• Visibly aging makes you unattractive. (Even now I can hear the refrain of some commercial I have probably watched thousands of times: “to visibly reduce the signs of aging…”)

• “Allowing” my body to change its shape means I failed in some way to remain disciplined about my health.

• It’s my job to come as close to the traditional Western standard of beauty as possible throughout my life. Any failure to do so will likely result in ostracization, loss of power or authority of some dimension.

I agreed to these.

And I know there are more.

(I am still in the process of discovering and weeding them out, because, like an invasive species of plant, they are deeply rooted in the soil of my mind, intertwined with vital veins of my own inner truth.)

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I know there are people on a crusade to slow or reverse the aging process. I have nothing against their efforts in as much as they are about extending quality of life, health and vitality. But my deeper concern is that they in part contributing to the demonization of aging as the process of growth and maturation we have throughout our lives – should we be so lucky as to experience that process with clear minds and hearts for eight, nine or ten decades.

Once I realized (and it took me the better part of 18 months) I had made these agreements, I was pretty shocked by them.

Once I surfaced them, and got a good look at them in the sunlight, I saw how harmful they were. How untrue. How mean. How impossible. And how many people I loved stood in contrast to them.

I saw how great they were at setting me up to participate in other people’s business models, moving me to buy things that promised to save me from falling victim to aging.

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During this time, I was hiking with a friend who is Vitamin B for the soul. I was sharing with her my fear about having a family photo taken for the coming holidays.

I had been feeling better about myself lately but was afraid a bad set of photos would set me back. I told her I wanted to feel really good about what I saw in those images.

She heard me out, and then told me,

“What if when you saw those photos, you saw and celebrated yourself as this is where I am on my journey?”

In that moment, she reoriented my map.

Reminded me I am not done. I am a human being lucky enough to be toward the end of my fourth decade of this journey of life.

This is where I am on my journey.

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Of late, this has become a mantra for me.

It excites me – because I wonder who I will be next?

Where will I go?

How will I continue to change?

In so many ways, I feel like I’m only getting better and better at being human.

All these images, these moments, are just pinprick, peephole moments on my journey.

I am still journeying! That is the celebration! That is the preciousness.

I am caring for my vessel with care, and now with love and acceptance. And with an eye toward vitality and presence. I am grateful for it.

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Like Taylor Swift has reflected to us, I am in an era.

Our eras will change. We will change. And yes, that means aging, bodies moving and molding to the blessings of our current circumstances.

Blessing, again and again, the miracles of the physical self.

My body was twice round with life.

It once produced life-giving milk for my children, who thrived from the nutrition I created.

My legs have carried me to nearly a dozen countries on four continents.

My arms have held tight to my husband, have lifted the bodies of small children and held close loved ones as they approached death.

My lungs have breathed in clean mountain air, and air filled with smoke and windswept desert dust.

My eyes have seen sunsets and sunrises over mountains and lakes and oceans and deserts and through the trees of forests.

My feet have run thousands of miles and danced away at dozens of weddings and birthday parties and New Year’s Eve’s.

I’m coming to realize it’s about celebrating, and getting wildly curious, creative and excited about the particularities of the era we are arriving in.

Using it as a moment to fete what changes – and what remains true.

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