Saturday, February 13, 2010

Old Glimpse

Have you ever caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and noticed something that wasn't there before? The sight of your scalp due to thinning hair, a general sag to your muscle tone, a big mole, fat buildup in your tummy or rear end, a slumping of your shoulders, new wrinkles and lines on your face? This seems to happen to me from time to time, and it always comes as such a shock. The first aspect of the shock is how I never saw this "feature" before. I mean, I look in the mirror every day when I shave, brush my teeth, or smear on my deoderant. Things like this just do not appear out of the blue or all of a sudden. The second aspect of the shock is that the things that one tends to notice in this manner are almost always associated with getting older.

Can you shrug this type of observation off and accept it? Maybe it is easy to blame on the wicked and cruel and unflattering lighting in our bathrooms. Maybe we can just blame it on the angle of our body relative to the mirror or a week or two of undisciplined living. However, the things that I notice make it clear that aging and time are inevitable. They serve to humble us and let us know that we are, indeed, finite. We need to live while we can and make the most out of each and every day.