“Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to us.”

–Leon Trotsky

 

No matter how old we are in this moment, we are ALL growing older.

When the very first gray hair appears on our head, it is an uncertain juncture in life. We go to the mirror with a sinking feeling of dread and try to pluck out the evidence – one here, two there. But the more we pull out, more seem to come in. The purpose of this blog is not to prevent the inescapable, but to find out how we might achieve agelessness in body, mind, emotions, and spirit as a four-part process.

I tease my friends by asking which of them would like to relive their teen years. It often brings a groan. Youth has a lot to offer, but so does the experience of age.

In India there is a joke:

It’s about a man going to a barber and asking, “Do you have anything for gray hair?” “Yes,” the barber says, “respect.”

Just because we don’t have wrinkles or a gray hair, we are not necessarily alive in the fullest sense of the word. Does that mean we are necessarily young or ageless?

This is the paradox of life: No matter how we cling to youth through our body, sooner or later it begins to let go of you.

But when we do not cling to the body – and beauty — there might be a different result. We see that not just in the lives of many great saints and mystics. We see it also in the neighbor next door, as well as in the famous and the not-so famous.

“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt