I e-mailed a friend the other day to encourage him in some recent good behavior, and told him he should look in the mirror and smile at himself–a reference to an earlier post you might remember. He wrote back that he couldn’t do it because he was too ugly. I wrote back that beauty is in the eye of the beholder–true, but not very helpful.
A couple of days later I was smiling at my own face in the mirror and thinking, “What a funny-looking old geezer.” (The humor of my appearance was enhanced by fragments of recently ingested granola stuck in my teeth.) It reminded me of my friend, and it occurred to me that perhaps the reason he couldn’t be amused at his appearance was that he wanted to look different. Most likely, I thought, he wanted to look like he did in his early twenties–quite an attractive young fellow.
I suspect that’s true of many people: they think they have become ugly because time has left it’s mark. A few years ago I said something to one of my step-daughters about looking old, which she contradicted. I conceded that I was holding up fairly well, but pointed out that my skin had lost “the bloom of youth.” She could hardly argue with that. Since then I’ve lost a few pounds in the interests of health and longevity, and I’ve gotten a bit more wrinkled–even gaunt, some might say (including me).
I think the difference between my friend and I is that I have been preparing to become old. The Buddhists recommend contemplating decomposing corpses to instill the understanding that that will be my fate, too, and I have taken their advice seriously. I have no expectations of retaining my youth, or the advantages that come with youth.
My wife, Eve, has been somewhat disapproving of my referring to myself as an old man, on the premise that it doesn’t indicate a positive attitude, but I counter that the most positive attitude one can have is to be in touch with reality. She says I’m handsome, and that’s very nice, but as I have discussed elsewhere, whether someone thinks I’m handsome or ugly is a product of the accidents of their life history. If those accidents result in their thinking a guy who looks like me is handsome, I can enjoy that, but there’s nothing in that confluence of events that I can take credit for, or solace in.
The truth is, that it would take a very odd chain of circumstances to produce anyone below the age of 55 or so that would find me attractive, which means that there are rather large numbers of human beings who would agree with the assessment that, yes, I look like an old man. That is a reality that I think it is beneficial for me to be cognizant of. Being comfortable with that fact prevents my being disappointed when younger people fail to recognize my existence, or recognize and are repelled by it. Being comfortable with how I appear to others allows me to have a sense of humor about my situation.
The humor arises from the divergence between how I look now, and how I imagined in the folly of my youth that I would never grow old. Some ancient god of myth once observed that the funniest thing about human beings is that they see illness, aging, and death all around them, and imagine it will never happen to them.
Our presumptions are wonderfully amusing, and looking at myself in the mirror is a vivid reminder of all the ones I’ve entertained–and the ones I no doubt still do. Plenty of reason to smile.
And So It’s Come to This