Yesterday, while walking into a store I noticed a beautiful women with bright eyes and a smile filled with sunshine! She wore a lovely pink pant suit with a soft floral blouse, her lipstick matching her outfit. She was glorious!
She was also about one hundred years old!
This darling woman may have been 4'10" if she could stand up straight... but she was holding onto her walker, slowing and carefully manoeuvring it in the parking lot, taking her time as she approached the store.
I found myself wanting to hold, in my mind and heart this most lovely woman.
She spoke to me of gentleness, acceptance, joy, care, wisdom, and all the beauty of those who have lived a full life.
In this moment I suddenly had a brief flashback to a time a few years ago, while attending a very luxurious event, seeing a woman whose face and neck revealed an quite elderly woman yet her face was taught, tight, and strained without a wrinkle or flaw. It was obvious she had had many face lifts to recreate the face, or possibly recapture the life, of a young woman, but the result was something so odd and uncomfortable it stuck in my memory.
In that brief moment of reflection, I pondered the very human process of aging.
Much of the modern world abhors the process of growing older, it ignores the elderly, while celebrating youth. Our culture seems to revere the young while dismissing those whose very lives have brought us here. Our elderly become invisible as we repress and work to avoid the inevitable journey of life and death.
In times past, the elderly were those who were deeply honored and revered. The wisdom and understanding brought forth by the elders was considered sacred and valuable, even life sustaining in some cultures.
Have we lost this treasure of our elders?
Have we forgotten that those who have managed life for decades have a wisdom that is unavailable to the young? That the experience of those who have tread the path before us have knowledge that the emerging soul is unable to grasp?
Have we looked at the elderly as an old shoe to be thrown away, rather than a fine wine that becomes more valuable in time?
As I look at our world I have a sense that we have released the steady, comforting, gentle, and wise strength that is provided by those who have already traveled our path and experienced the journey. The stability and grounding that we might receive from those who have lived longer is sadly unappreciated, even unknown.
And, I think of the lovely woman in pink... I hold in my heart gratitude for her decades of experience, for her example of gracefully maturing, and for the wisdom of life held within her sparkling beauty.
Like the setting sun, I want to hold onto her light.
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