Growing Old or Gaining Experience

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.
Francis Bacon

When did we become adults? One day we were children then it seems like over night we have become adults.

Our childhoods go by so fast that were barely have time to cherish it. We spent most of our childhoods wishing to be adults, but spend most of our adult lives wishing to by young and innocent like children again.

I was looking over some old photos the other day:
photos of myself and my sister as children, photos of my partner and me when we first started going out.
And then comparing them to photos of myself now.

I know that the person in the photos is me: I recognise my face, my eyes, my hair, my freckles. But when looking at the pictures I can see the slow transition from the little girl I used to be to the mid 20 year old women who I am now.

It is a weird sensation to look back on what I used to look like to what I look like now. I know that aging is apart of life and that everyone goes through this, but it is a strong reality check to see it through photos lined up side by side.

A child’s face will vary from an adult’s face in the following manner:
• Teeth variously missing or spaced
• Freckles or acne
• Flat eyebrows, fuller than the child’s
• Ears that appear oversized
• Nose which generally appears somewhat small, short and wide
• Relatively flatter and less well defined cheeks
• More baby fat generally throughout the face resulting in less distinctive features

An adult face will progressively age in the following manner:
• The cheeks sag inferiorly resulting the appearance of jowls
• The corners of the mouth move inferiorly resulting in a slight frown look
• The tissue around the eyes sag inferiorly
• The eyelids, upper and lower, themselves sag inferiorly
• The tissue of the forehead drifts inferiorly, creating wrinkles and dropping the eyebrows downward and giving them a flatter appearance
• The nose may elongate and move the tip inferiorly
• The nose may develop a small to pronounced dorsal hump
• The tip of the nose may enlarge and become bulbous

More info .

Just take a moment and look at your self in the mirror: you will recognise yourself instantly but have you ever really looked at yourself properly?
You will notice that you don’t have the look of childish innocence anymore but it has been replaced by wisdom and maturity. Your eyes will have softened and your mouth may have thinned out slightly.

But don’t get disheartened. We all know that childhood can’t last forever; a few short years and then its gone. But even though we cant look like children forever we can always capture that childlike essence in our everyday experiences.

Just because we have become older in looks, experience, and wisdom it doesn’t mean that we have to let our age define our actions. We can still enjoy the pleasures in life and we can still embrace everyday to its fullest. Possible even more so now that we are older and wiser then when we are children: for what its worth children can’t drive, don’t have their own money and have to live by parental rules.

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
Tom Stoppard

#life
#ageing
#wisdom
#maturity
#mindset
#appearance
#appreciation
#change
#beauty

%selfavenue