When Faces Lie

For 60 odd years I have worn this body, which, once fully extended, began its natural journey of gradual degeneration. It’s a body that has fared pretty well, until the 6th decade that is. Now that’s when the aging process hit the acceleration pedal in a bid to catch up with reality.

Appearance has never been something that I have fussed over, despite the patriarchal programme that my mother adhered to, which clearly underlined that your success in life, as a woman, depended on how you look and how you cook. So, in keeping with my outlook, lines, creases, sagging skin, or the lack thereof, is not an issue to lose sleep over. I find the commercially driven anti-aging combat, desperately pitiful for the torturous impact it has on so many. It’s a pursuit that definitely belongs in ‘The Froth’ realm and not Beneath it.

However, during my 20s and 30s I would actually have appreciated an extra dose or two of the aging process, to have kept up to speed with a look that more closely resembled my years. In fact, I would have grabbed at anything that could have bolstered areas of waning confidence. A baby face didn’t bode well in meetings where one’s contribution was supposed to come from a face that complemented the acquisition of knowledge from experience.

Come the sixties, though, and the scales tipped, with the younger-than-I-am look capitulating to one of ye olde. But, with that comes a confidence that doesn’t need a crutch or mask, buoyed as it is by life experience, by just the sheer number of years, regardless of accomplishments. I mean next to a number such as 25, 60 odd has to count for something. Maybe not. After all, if you’ve only been on this planet for 25 years, or even 35, it would still feel like a life time to you! A long time to some, and a blink of the lashes to others.

But confidence, it would seem, does not dance over old skin for others to witness, or so it feels by the reception that one receives. Some (and I stress some) unlined faces tend to offer unsolicited clear and slow explanations on, for example, from a pharmacist, how to take chronic medication that I have successfully swallowed at the correct dosage for a couple of years!  Despite an agile body, it seems that my brain is predisposed to being judged by its cover.  Now, a younger looking face would go a long way to preempt the stigmatised preconceptions about one’s capability in a society that, by and large, treats the older sector as one that is diminished in some capacity (or many), and therefore in need of help. (What does diminish is self-censorship which in turn liberates self-expression - previously shackled by our fear of others’ opinions.)

Relating, however, is a two-way process with the dominant influence coming from how you behave or conduct yourself. That determines how you are treated, once the other party has skipped over the ‘hurdle’ of your appearance and its culture-induced associations. But the other side of the coin can also develop, when behaviour conforms to treatment. Ever been into a home for the elderly or frail and heard how the carers talk to the residents? Your ears could mistake it for a nursery school.

Generally, by this age, our parents have passed on. No parental figure left to proffer directions, couched in love of course. But no matter, our children, bless their cotton socks, eagerly leap into the role. The parent-child dynamic becomes a little blurry, to say the least.

When is it that you cross that line, the one that signifies the divide between being of value to society and not? How many wrinkles are allowed before you are dismissed as one who has strayed from that pasture? In a society that delights in, if not drools over, anything that is believed to bestow status, ongoing notable achievements play a role in keeping an oldie hooked into the grid of full-witted acknowledgement. Just being doesn’t quite crack the nod.

This is not a “woe is me” story but rather a little tongue-in-cheek chuckle at a few misplaced attitudes generated by the youth, and not specifically the current generation, but youth in general from the western culture, a culture that tends to marginalise the elderly. I do wonder why this is the case though, when so many other cultures revere their elders for their experience and guidance. Reverence may sound too grandiose, but how about just continued recognition for being meaningful human beings.

And to end, a little anecdote from a friend who recalled how, as a child, she and her cousins used to play pranks on their grandfather who good-naturedly played along, until with a laugh he told them that the joke was on them, because, as he said,

“What you are, I once was. And what I am, you will be!”