Aging

And trying not to

We live in an age of cosmetic surgery. A world where the young inject their faces with fillers that paralyze their muscles into barbie-like perfection. Where the old have faces that are stretched unnaturally tight from their numerous face lifts, and eyebrows plastered to the ceiling, and lips like Fungus from Monsters Inc. Where thousands of dollars go towards pinching and pulling and pressing and transplanting in order to look like a walking medical malfunction. In an age where women hide behind fake noses and lips, false hair and fake smiles. If you look at modern day celebrities, they all look the same. Plastic. 

Now, when everyone can look perfect, perfect isn’t perfect enough. Your nose and waist have to be smaller. Your lips and chest and butt have to be bigger. Ok, now we are using surgeries and filters... But that still isn’t enough. Now we need something different. Something unique. Oh, but everyone is trying so desperately to be unique. So in order to be special, you must present a shock value. You have to strip down more. You must show more skin. Now, high fashion looks more like something straight out of the hunger games than anything else. Distinctive uniformity. Grotesque absurdity. 

This is an age of foolishness. If only we would grow up.

And yet, why do I say this age? People have always been foolish. They have always been desperately grasping at time. Trying to rewind the clock. Attempting to avoid the inevitable. The only difference is that now we have the technology to indulge our fears. Now, with enough money you can buy youth. Or so they say.

However, these people do not know what youth is. Some have never truly known youth because they wasted theirs trying to become 21. And now they waste the rest of their lives trying to stay 21. They live their lives afraid to laugh for fear of wrinkles. Afraid to work for fear of scars. Afraid to live for fear of dying. This is not youth, it is slavery.

What a miserable life.

In an attempt to buy youth they have given up living. Truly living is dying to yourself. Dying for others. To the extent that you live life afraid of death you do not live at all.

I do not want to reach my deathbed with untapped potential. I do not want to cross the finish line with strength left. I do not want to regret that I didn’t do more.

I want to be spent. I want to die of living right. I want to have scars that tell stories and wrinkles that are a testament to my laughter. I want to hit the finish line full of love, which means that I have given it all away. For love is one of those things that, the more you give away the more you have. I want to have silver hair as a crown of wisdom.

Or not. Perhaps I will die tomorrow, maybe you will. Maybe this head will never be honored with white hair. I do not know. What I do know is that, whenever I die, it will not be a moment too soon. However young I may die, life will not have been stolen from me. I did not deserve to live, yet life was given to me. And not for me to hoard. It was given to me, so that I may in turn give it away. This is freedom; most people prefer chains. What they do not understand is, as someone once said, life is a gift and death is worth it.

God help me.