Fighting relentless march of time
OPINION: Ageing, is common to everyone.
No one escapes time’s relentless march. People’s best efforts to forestay the advance of years are ultimately over run by the ticking clock.
A Groupon survey confirmed how strong the quest is to defer ageing and to remain looking young.
When thousands of women were asked about the amount of money they might routinely spend on their appearance, the results were surprising.
The motivation to beat ageing over a lifetime (ages 18-78) costs women on average $225,360 and men clocked in at an average of $170,000.
Your initial reaction might be that it’s absurd you could throw a quarter of a million dollars at looking good.
But think again. To spend $313 a month on looking good may be completely foreign to the lifestyle of some, but evidently it isn’t for many.
Over the course of a month, if a woman whose regimen looked like- hair styling and treatments, cosmetics, nails, facials, beauty therapies, gym membership, fitness programmes, specialty dietary foods and supplements, the odd massage or tanning session, maintaining a stylish wardrobe, you could see how it might get up there.
And if you wanted the interventions of plastic surgeons along the way, you’d be likely to easily exceed that figure.
Our practices display our priorities.
Investing in the external value of ‘‘looking good’’ is fine - but on its own, it’s shallow and somehow misses the point of life itself.
Pursuing ‘‘skin-deep’’ beauty unaccompanied by development of ‘‘inner’’ beauty, isn’t worth the cost.
Cambridge has many facilities that care for the elderly.
I have the opportunity to visit some of them and am often struck how the only difference between our aged seniors and the rest of us, is time.
There’s ones who shine. They exhibit thankfulness, contentedness and a notable absence of rancour, despite confronting their share of life’s challenges.
A black and white photograph taken over 60 years ago, captured the vibrancy a young couple had once shared.
The young man’s eyes sparkled, his jaw was set, the attractive young woman’s beautiful facial features, showed just a hint of make-up on perfect skin and complexion.
Decades later, something of their radiance remains intact, in spite of the loss of physical form which scrolling years have visited on them.
Sighing with good natured resignation to losing her hair and her ‘‘teef’’, she reaches to steady his once strong hands, now trembling and covered with folded wreaths of parchment-like skin.
Relying heavily on others these days, they’re reconciled to ‘‘age’’.
They talk of love and deeply held values that ground them in fearless hope for all that lies ahead. Inner beauty ensures that how old you are, matters less than how you are old.
-Murray Smith is the senior pastor at Bridges Church, Cambridge.
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