I saw the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and it makes me think more about aging than I otherwise would have been. No, I'm not at a stage that I'm consciously thinking about aging but sometimes, a door opens somewhere and you find yourself peeping into the future.
(For those who has yet seen the movie, I urge you to see it when you get the chance. It's a unique movie with a story to tell and different perspective from looking at life and the essence of time.)
We all age… a baby, a teenage, an adult. Everyone! The truth and nothing but the truth is that no one can escape it. No $200 cream, no plastic surgery, no matter what you do, you can’t stop yourself from aging. You can only delay it, you can’t prevent it.
Now that we got over with the facts, let’s look at aging from a
top down approach.
The head
As we mature, our brain ages. That’s technical, we all know that. Our brain capacities increase many folds since we were babies. We learn different languages, subject matters (science, mathematics, geography, languages, arts, literature, etc, etc); understanding others and ultimately ourselves.
The face
From a baby face to that of an adult, our face is what we look at most in the mirrors every morning, as soon as we woke up to the time we retire to bed every night. It is what many of us are concerned about, among many other things in life. There is no need to make a case for this by the amount of
cosmetics being sold around the world every day. Yet, it’s also been known that many a times, people may come to hate that face (they present to the world) themselves. Those who felt they cannot be loved for who they are, or people who grew up thinking too much about how others see them, the face is something they feel they need to improve upon so as to please the world and themselves.
The body
The body carries the most important organs, the skin and the heart. The skin protects us from unwanted germs and diseases while the heart, without it, we can’t function physically and emotionally. As soon as the heart stops, we are declared dead legally. If we are not careful though, we might still be dead when we stop to feel for ourselves as well as for others. That’s why you get terms like broken hearted and heartbreaks. Also, there is heart attacks. The heart is something we can’t touch physically and yet we are touched by others through our hearts. From the bottom of the heart tells others that we feel through our hearts.
The legs
Our legs take us to everywhere and anywhere we’d like to go. It’s our vehicle in life and a great many things have been invented to take us further than our legs could have. For example, the car, the plane and even the spaceship! Yes, we humans are potentially greedy in some ways. We are not contented with what we’ve given. We take our steps further but that’s also what humanity so interesting and challenging. Each generation, we advanced further and further. We took our generation beyond the last and we think we are better as people. I hope we are all treading the right direction with each step and path we are taking and not to our own destruction.
The feet
The feet been considered dirty in many religious buildings insofar that we are required to take our shoes off before we enter the temples. That’s social culture and belief. I shall not dwell on that. Our feet is, imho, what held us up. They may be tiny but do not overlook them. Remember the phrase, leave only footprints? That’s not only what we leave in life but that’s something poetic in them that we leave to the world at large.
Just an intriguing thought strikes my mind… ever think of the bottom up approach?
I mean we age with usage and the more we used it, the sooner it ages. For example, we first heard of people complain about pains from the feet and proceeding upwards. Feet, then body, then the eyes and teeth (losing the effectiveness of its function). At the end of our lives, we still have our hair which we are really concerned but serve no distinctive function except for cosmetic purposes. Just a thought.
We may also think of time and aging as a linear approach or as a dynamic approach. Whatever it is we choose to believe, it is against time. And until we can understand time better (philosophically and way too complicated for me to try to define it; not to mention that I don't like to define time by mere analog or digital watches), aging is as far as I can tell, a process. A process that slips by us day by day without us realizing it. To capture this process ourselves, if you choose to do so, take pictures of yourself. I can guarantee that you will see it with your lens.
Now, to keep things light (been way too heavy lately and aging doesn't ease that either ;-)) here's something for fun. Live it well, my friend, live it well!!!
