I was sitting in my car in the parking lot at the YMCA, having just finished my exercise. I was a sweaty mess and leaving to go prepare dinner.
I was asking myself was it a positive or negative that I could now park in the “55 and Over” parking section of the Y parking lot when I looked over into the car next to me and a very pretty, very elderly woman, caught my eye. I am guessing she was in her 90’s. She was looking in the rearview mirror at herself. Looking this way and that. Examining. I sat and watched her dig for her lipstick. She applied it ever so carefully, looked for a tissue, blotted it with care. She then checked the mirror again, looking this way and that. Examining. Then she drove away.
Being a photographer at heart who seems to walk around viewing things as if looking through a camera lens, I wished I had my “good camera”, as I call it, and somehow could have asked permission to take her picture looking in the mirror and applying her lipstick. It seemed such a beautiful, personal slice of someone’s life that I did not know and likely never will.
I am finding myself examining “this way and that” as I look into my lighted make-up mirror I use to get ready for the day. Last night, my bedtime reading turned out to be “Makeup Pointers for over 50”. Then I fell fast asleep before I could start my reading that I intended to do. I hope this does not sound vain; I do not think I am. I just do not want to be using non-age appropriate makeup techniques.
I am reminded I am not thirty sometimes when I try to keep up with the energy level of my two sons, their wives and children. I can still hold up ok though.
I read once that we should all be the best at each age we can be. We should not look back or be envious of those younger because we had our time to be that age and now it is theirs. So, I try to be the best at each age I can be.
I LOVE the essay below and the definition of youth it provides. After I post this blog, I am going to hang it up next to my light- up, magnify -your- every-pore-and -more makeup mirror.
Keep the Faith #ktf
#thisearthlyjourney
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Youth
Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees. It is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep spring of life.
Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty, more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by the number of years; we grow old by deserting our ideas.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what’s next and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage, and power from men and from the Infinite, so long you are young.
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with the snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there’s hope you may die young at eighty.
Author: Samuel Ullman (April 13, 1840 – March 21, 1924) was an American businessman, poet, humanitarian.
This Earthly Journey 