Here is a rather interesting question that I propose. Lets say, there were no mirrors in the world, one could not see oneself, neither did one know or have comprehension of age or the movement of time. Would one feel age? Especially if one was healthy, but had no idea of how one looks . Generally we often look at our face in the mirror and that is how we generally make the assumption if we look good or bad or aging.
Today everything is based on physical looks, beauty as ages pass are often changing--all one needs to look at is what was beautiful to Botticelli or to Michelangelo or to Bouguereau. Now, of course much of perfection was within the ideal of the Greeks and Romans that brought it to us in the first place to some degree , all we need to do is look at their art. but, I am not really talking of beauty here, but the idea of how we feel, and how we would feel if there were no mirrors. Now this concept goes for both female and male genders, it chooses not. Men are just as vulnerable to this notion, studies show often more than women today.
Would the idea of yourself change with time, were we not aware of time, or of growing old. Would we have the concept of growing old had we no clues given? How about if we were all blind? Would it change our concept of each other, and more so would it change the concept of our ourselves? Would we feel the same, providing we had no physical problems? Many elderly people are healthier that ones who are years younger--what is age then? Or the feeling of age. Is it the belief that we feel about the passing of the years, or looking into the mirror--were all those things not present would we age slower, feel better.
Ask any octogenarian--they feel inside exactly as they did years ago when they were young--what gives them the sense of age is the visage staring themselves back from the mirror. It that what ages us--our actual own belief? Or the world telling us exactly how we should look?
If age is getting old--then why do we still feel the same, well most of us, to the very end. Of course there are always exception--there are 28 year olds that are like 82 and 82 year old that are like 28. Believe me this is a fact--I have come across a few. Is it then all in the mind, and the one`s that the world cannot entangle, or trap into the web are the one`s who feel better and do not feel their age?
Is this not perhaps proof that the soul is present, that there is actually something there that is ageless, timeless. And that we should actually concentrate on not allowing the outside world into our inner world to corrupt our own sense of being, our own vision of ourselves and our own value of our self.
That perhaps if we could overcome the actual message of our mirrors, we would perhaps feel better, age slower and be more happy. Maybe if we do not believe what is present in the looking glass for it may simply be a trick of the visible universe that keeps hounding us doggedly expressing its own version and vision of beauty, which in the eyes of the world is, youth and thinness for women and muscularity and the washboard abs for men for men.
True--we need the physical attraction for reproduction to propagate the species, but is that real love or merely the laws of nature so that we don`t die out. but being attracted physically is far from love, it has more to do with lust, which I suppose is needed biologically to reproduce. But the two are seldom present together--Very rarely. That is why in my mind relationships fail, marriages disintegrate and love is non existent, for most of these relationships are propelled by a biologic urge on passing on our genes to the next generation, nothing to do with love.
Yet youth has no experience, little world vision and little experience nor wisdom. That comes with age--yet age is put down and is shunned, apart from a few eastern culture--major ones being China,
Japan and India where old age, white hair is honored, revered and respected. It is sign of wisdom, experience and knowledge. Hardly in the west. The elderly are put away and sent out on an ice float and sent off into the ocean, as with the Inuit. Sad.
Why do they say--beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Does the beloved present a different appearance to its lover than to the rest of the world? Why? If this is so--then what is reality anyway? What is the real picture? Above all what really matters?
If we lived in a world without light, without eyes, without mirrors to reflect our appearance--would we always feel the same as we did-- through the years?
When my grandmother was 87, she always said she always thought and felt the same as she always did--ever since she could remember. And she was terrible happy to the end. It is only the world that tells us that we are old, and we believe it, and thus we are. It is not sickness either, because there are millions of sick young people as well as old--so then, I have to agree with the saying "one is as old as one feels"--which in the light of all this is rather a true statement. It is the world that tells us whom and what we are --and we believe it. Why?
The bottom line is--it is all in the mind, and we should not listen to the world if we want to be happy. We do not have to satisfy the world, for it dosn`t care about us one bit, just makes our lives miserable--so all we have to do is live according to that which makes us happy. We only have to satisfy our heart--and our life, for we only have one. The concept of beauty has changed throughout the ages, and it will keep changing, so why cause grief to oneself for the satisfaction of the world, that couldn`t care in the least anyway?
Many fairy tales are metaphors of life, and many have stories where there are unusual stories of very deep love. Now when the princess kissed the frog and fell in love, and beauty fell in love with the beast, did they actually chang into tha beautiful princee, or did they simply transform through the power of love in the eyes, in the hearts of the lover regarding their beloved? Something to ponder. Love changes everything--
"Love, love changes everything,
hands and faces, earth and sky
Love, love changes everything,
How you live and how you die
Love, can make the summer fly,
Or a night seem like a lifetime
Yes love, love changes everything,
Now I tremble at your name
Nothing in the world will ever be the same"
Yes--love changes everything for sure!
So forget the mirrors, forget the magazines and forget all the people who live off the profit by making the majority of the world miserable as they are the "deciders", the authority of what is beautiful and what is not in the world. Beauty, age is an abstraction-- real beauty lies in the heart. As my cousin so profoundly has said about his wife, "I fell in love with her soul"
What does one fall in love with--youth, beauty, age or soul ? I wonder. I know my choice. But Cicukam I am the eternal romantic, aren`t I? For me all is based on love--I woudn`t have it any other way, never have.
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