Embracing What Is
How many times have you wished your significant other could read your mind? You’re thinking about an exotic, exclusive, vacation for your birthday, jewelry or concert tickets. And violá, they come through. Of course, in my case, more often than not, I’m glad my husband can’t read my mind. Because he’d know I think he buys me the worst presents. (To give you an idea, the best present he ever gave me were art books from someone’s curb. Someone’s trash. They were nice books. Best present he ever gave me, and we’ve been married 42 years.)
I of course accept with graciousness. I am thankful that my not-so-subtle dropping of hints about my upcoming birthday have been heard. I wait at least a day before letting him know I’ll be returning/exchanging the gift. (Accept the books.)
Funny that he gets the hint of the date, but not the less than subtle hints about what I want.
All that aside, if we’re on social media we now have something that does read our mind. At least that’s how it feels. It’s called algorithms. It is insisted that our minds aren’t being read, but rather our searching on the internet is being tracked and calculated. But when I sit down at my computer because let’s say I was thinking I wanted to buy a rattan purse for the summer.
Suddenly before I start the search, ads for summer purses start showing in my feed. I think my mind is being read.
In this case I don’t mind. The internet does seem to know what I’m looking for. And it saves me time on my search.
Yesterday, as I was thinking about what it means to be a woman my age Paulina Porizkova appeared on my feed. I clicked on a few of her posts, and even though I really didn’t know much about her before, I am in love with her now. She’s embracing her age. She talks about feeling invisible, (Can you imagine?) and irrelevant, amongst other aging woman concerns.
She’s beautiful. She’s a former super-model. She posts herself sans make-up, fillers, and surgery.
I could relate to much of what she was saying. Almost all of it except the super-model part. But if she feels invisible is there any hope for the rest of us?
Porizkova says; “Embracing one’s age is a process.” That’s true for me. How about you? I had a hard time in my mid-50s accepting the changes of aging to my looks. I tried Botox on my forehead and liked the result. I did it twice. My forehead looked great, but it didn’t match the lines around my mouth which I couldn’t do anything about. And I thought that looked odd, so I gave up the Botox. I spent more than I should on products, none of which stopped my skin from aging. The moisturizers did make my wrinkled skin appear more dewey. I can tell you dewey is not the same as youthful.
Now I’m 64 and am all in with how I look and who I am. I think it’s called maturity, eating right and working out. I’ve reached a point in my life where how the insides function matter more to me that how the outside looks. Funny thing, once you get the inside right, the outside doesn’t look half bad.
