Forever Young

Pen & Watercolour 8″ x 12″

Artwork & Content Copyright 2009 Jean Burman

(unauthorised use prohibited)

I drew this cartoon last year but didn’t get around to painting it.  This morning as I was doing the rounds of my favourite blogs… a comment made by my friend John Crowther (over on his cartoon odyssey) got me thinking again about the topic of “growing old -vs- growing young”.  

Here’s what he had to say:

As I stand on the threshold of completing another decade I ask myself… what is the line between youth and old age? It’s that point in your life when you stop wanting to seem more grown up, and you wish you looked younger than your years. In other words it’s when life keeps offering you new wrinkles.

I thought this was hilarious. And so keenly observed!

I don’t know about you but I think there are definitely perks in this growing older caper. Not that I’m really old yet… but the time will no doubt come…. probably sooner than I’d like.  Or… maybe not.  Depending on how I feel about it… and how I decide to handle it.

Let’s “face” it (wrinkles and all)… growing older gives us choices for the very first time in our lives about how we will go about adding on those years. As children we couldn’t wait to be all grown up.  As teenagers we couldn’t wait to be free (yeah like that will ever happen! tee-hee).  As adults with families careers and high expectations in tow… we couldn’t wait to get out of the workaday world.  But as older people… wow… suddenly the world is your oyster!

Then and only then… for the very first time you get to decide the particulars of how and when you will grow older…. or better yet… grow “younger”.  It’s an attitude… and entirely your decision.

Some of the oldest people I know have no wrinkles at all. They’ve been old since birth.  On the other hand… some of the youngest people I know may have wrinkles in all the wrong places… but they are still going places at a rate of knots that might leave the “chronologically advantaged” green with envy (were it not for their youthful lack of wisdom and insight! grin)

Long story short.  Age is immaterial. Inside each of us is the child the teenager the adult and the older person.  We are one and the same.  Just as children report how they disliked being spoken down to as a child… older people report the very same thing.

It was a favourite beef of my mother’s that the elderly are spoken down to as children because… perhaps they couldn’t hear well… or because they couldn’t walk too well… or because they were dependent to some degree on others. It does seem just a tad ironic doesn’t it?

In truth… we are timeless beings without a number. By coincidence… walking the planet at the very same time.  We may be on different paths and on what would seem to be a vastly differing time plan… but we are all nonetheless “in it together”… no matter the age.  

Life is short.  We don’t need to be reminded. (No… I take that back… the young definitely need to be reminded)

So in the grand scale of things what’s a few wrinkles if they were honestly earned… through the pitch and toss of hard won experience?   I have been… however… preparing my face for the inevitable onslaught… smiling each day into the mirror (no seriously! – grin) and working on my laugh lines!  Growing older may not be the desirable outcome… but it’s the inevitable one… so we may as well look happy about it!

“It may be clothes that maketh the man… but it’s definitely wrinkles that maketh the person!”  - Jeanism courtesy of the writer

Tagged as: attitude, old people, wisdom, young