When I’m 23 again, I’ll floss daily, develop a sustainable exercise routine, and really get to know myself.

 In my next adolescence, I’ll spend more time studying and being an activist, and less time worrying about boys. 

Recently, I’ve been having a lot of unbidden, automatic thoughts like these.

I don’t know what’s causing it… maybe it’s that I’ve started to refer to myself as being “almost 40” (though, in earnest, I’m only 37).  Or maybe this is something that comes with parenthood, and the realization that my toddler will never be a baby again.

I’m not sure, but as an existentially-oriented therapist, I’m deeply curious.

My relationship with aging

The thing is, as relationships with aging goes, I think mine is relatively healthy.  I don’t believe that getting older is a bad thing.  At its best, age brings wisdom, confidence, stability, and more security in one’s identity.  You couldn’t pay me enough to go back to being 23.

And yet, as time goes on, having a human body is an increasingly complicated and messy thing.  Like anything else, we are prone to entropy.  Without active intervention, we deteriorate over time.

When my toddler was a baby, just learning to eat solid food, he tried to put a fork into his eyeball.  “Oh no!” I cried.  “You only get one set of eyes for your ENTIRE LIFE!”

But shit, so do I.  Only one set of eyes, one set of lungs, one heart, one brain, one pair of knees, one increasingly aching lower back.  And on, and on, and on.

But as Bojack Horseman says, “time’s arrow marches forward”.

Our culture’s toxic relationship with aging

It is a gift to have the opportunity to age, not a burden.

Our culture is so preoccupied with making time stand still.  We sell creams, potions, injections, and dyes with “anti-aging” properties.  These things don’t make us stop aging.  They just make us appear younger.

What’s the goal?  To leave a pretty corpse?

Or, fuck, maybe it’s to combat the obsolescence that we assign to older people, especially older women.  It’s so easy to dismiss those who are aging (“OK Boomer”), and that makes it terrifying to see signs of age in ourselves.

We are also, deeply and understandably, terrified of death.  I say “understandably” because death is the Big Unknown.  Fear of death shows up in all kinds of unexpected ways.  It makes us feel like we’re wasting time when we’re stuck in traffic, or when we’ve stayed in a relationship that’s past its prime.

It even makes it hard to be decisive.  Irvin Yalom talks about this in his book, “Staring at the Sun”.  Every time you make a decision, you close a door.  Or, as my favorite sci fi writers might say, you pick a version of the multiverse.  And with death – as far as we know – there are no more options.  All the doors are closed.  So every decision we’re faced with feels like a small death.

(This is a useful idea for people who struggle with indecisiveness, though not a particularly instructive one.  Perhaps the “fix” here is to focus therapy sessions explicitly on existential anxiety, rather than the surface-level question of why it’s so hard to choose a brand of toothpaste.)

So here’s the healthiest way to deal with these harsh realities: Strive to live meaningfully.  Forge deep connections with other people.  And work hard to make our unique bag of flesh and bones as enjoyable to live in as we possibly can.

Having a human body is a lot of work

I’m not talking about the “pink tax”.  If you want to get eyelash extensions, acrylic nails, and highlights – if those things make you feel pampered and happy – great, do it!

And I’m definitely not talking about dieting, which I firmly believe makes our lives less livable, and our bodies less pleasant to live in.  (After all, mental health is health, your brain is part of your body, and deprivation takes a toll.)

I’m talking about the baseline things we need to do in order to be okay.  Floss daily.  Move our bodies regularly.  Go to physical therapy if we injure our fragile selves, and do the assigned exercises.  Get annual checkups, and go to the recommended follow-up appointments.  Attend twice-yearly dental cleanings.  Stretch.  Put healthy foods into our bodies.  Take vitamins.

And…

And…

And…

It quickly becomes a full-time job.

Most of us define our days by our jobs, and fit “self-care” into the tiny pockets between work, family, and the rest of our lives.  This is a necessity of survival in a capitalist society.  Wouldn’t it be lovely if, instead, we could put our basic, bodily needs at the top of the list?

Wouldn’t it be lovely if, in taking care of our bodies, we could focus more on the feeling than the aesthetic; more on the need to live sustainably than the fear of being perceived as an Old Person?

Reclaiming aging gracefully

I recently dyed my grey roots.  This is unremarkable.  I found my first grey hairs at the age of 18, and my hairdresser has been helping me hide them since I was about 30.

But this time was different.  This time, I dyed them purple.

It wasn’t a whim, or an early onset midlife crisis; it was an intentional decision, a statement about what it means to age visibly.  It was my way of saying, “yes, I have grey hair.  Yes, I’m still vibrant.  No, I’m not ashamed of getting older – in fact, I can celebrate getting older.”

And the deep wrinkles that appear between my eyebrows… A few well-meaning people have suggested that I consider Botox.  And I get it.  The drive to hide wrinkles is real.

But I look in the mirror and knit my brow, deepening the lines.  What I see staring back is the facial expression that I make when I say to a client, “that must have been so hard!”  These are not arbitrary wrinkles.  These are my therapist lines, the well-worn paths left by 15 years of supporting over 1,000 clients.

I’m not hiding these signs of age anymore.  I’m highlighting them.  It’s been a marvelous and formative almost-40 years, and why would I want to hide that?

And as for taking care of my body, it’s a work in process.  I’m trying, to the best of my messy, fallible human ability.  I’m exercising, but not to try to “achieve hotness”.  I’m exercising because I have to live in this body for – if I’m lucky – another 50 years, so I’d better keep it as limber as I can.

Sure, it would be easier if I’d started earlier.  But it’s like that old saying:

The best time to build a tree is 10 years ago.  The second best time is now.