My own version of this dispiriting little exercise takes place in the bathroom mirror. What were once thunderheads have slowly and unavoidably become wisps of cirrus flitting irresolutely overhead.
Tilting my head down in front of the mirror, I look into the past; tilting it up, with the light streaming in from a window behind me, I see into the future, and it looks like a tire low on tread. Sorrow and grief , that is, are appropriate responses. In her book Older, Wiser, Fiercer , Carol Orsborn describes the early stretches of aging as the most difficult. But only when the irreversible losses begin setting in and it is clear there's no turning back do you become a candidate for serious transformation.
The two are joined at the hip. The truth is that most people are too busy worrying about what we think of them to really care all that much about us. Granted, caring what other people think of you—social acceptance—is an evolutionary adaptation, b ut to focus on getting attention—whether for your looks or your achievements—is to focus on what only other people can give you. Is trying to make peace with aging and mortality any more difficult or disheartening than living every day body- shaming yourself?
Certainly, getting older is better than the alternative, which is not getting older, and working to accept the loss of youth and beauty is better than the alternative, which is being glumly resigned to it, or outright miserable.
Besides, you never really lose your looks. You know exactly where they are—in the past. And constantly mourning your fading looks consigns you to living in the past rather than the present. My mother insisted it was one of the great and liberating benedictions of getting older, so it is something to look forward to. Meanwhile, the life-giving thing is to live life to the fullest even in the face of its most literally self -defeating forces, to keep wholeheartedly building sandcastles while fully aware of the incoming tide.
