As we age many of us face a paradox: we want to radiate beauty and be admired, yet we long be ourselves and free from the opinion and judgement of others.
No one wants to look frumpy, but what about looking and feeling the best we can at the age we are at rather than panicking and fearing the years ahead?
What if we buy into a new currency: accepting ourselves, helping others, making the world a better place and developing interests that we have denied ourselves for far too long?
If all our energy is invested in wishing we looked younger, we lose our creativity and opportunity in the moment; we repeat the patterns of the past and cling to ego and the insatiable need for validation from the outside.
I was so inspired when I read this article in the New York Times. Here is an excerpt from actress Frances McDormand on becoming an older woman in our society:
I have not mutated myself in any way,” she said. “Joel (her husband) and I have this conversation a lot. He literally has to stop me physically from saying something to people — to friends who’ve had work. I’m so full of fear and rage about what they’ve done.”
Looking old, she said, should be a boast about experiences accrued and insights acquired, a triumphant signal “that you are someone who, beneath that white hair, has a card catalog of valuable information.”
The words tumbled out of her rapidly and bluntly. She had points she wanted to make and made them in an open, down-to-earth manner with an occasional edge to it, a bit of a prickle.
The actress learned at the start of her career not to care too much about appearances. “
I was often told that I wasn’t a thing,” she said. “ ‘She’s not pretty enough, she’s not tall enough, she’s not thin enough, she’s not fat enough.’ I thought, ‘O.K., someday you’re going to be looking for someone not, not, not, not, and there I’ll be.”
