The Binary of Old and Young

There are times I pass a mirror and startle at the reflected image. Standing stock-still, the figure returning my stare has gray hair and the pale skin is loose over a tired-looking frame. At first, the image is mildly disconcerting as it is a reminder of aging. Gone is the firm, tanned skin and dark hair of exuberant youth which my fertile imagination constructs for me as my still current state.

Yet, the recognition of my true self is one of the full appropriateness of a life lived with all its delightful imperfections and splendid ambiguities. Youth marvels itself as the cock-of-the-walk with the world prepared to open before it. Old age, with an acceptance that youth will often mock, realizes the journey is one of grand adventures and devastating pains; but it is ever thus and the binary of youth/old is a nature of existence and one to be appreciated and honored.

"I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down." ( Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. New York: Harper Perennial, 1999. Print. Pg. 245.)

Perhaps wisdom - or at least a realization of one's proper place in the manner of things - comes from the battered and bruised existence of traversing and experiencing life. The muscular and sun-kissed youth is as vital and necessary as the "bloodied and scarred" relic of later years. Both create a completion, a maturation, and a sense of companionship with our fellow sojourners.

Namaste'