Beauty In Aging

Some years ago, 46 to be exact, I traveled with friends to Yucatan, Mexico. In our exploration of the area, our focus was to visit Chichen Itza, a city of Mayan ruins on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. In order to make the journey through the jungle roads, we got on a tour bus along with about fifteen other people. It was quite an adventure on a bus that was questionable as to whether we could trust it to get us to our destination and back. Along the rather long ride, we passed many homes made of tin or scraps of this and that, each revealing a lifestyle that was greatly simplified compared to how we lived in our California mountain town in the U.S.

Eventually we stopped at (if my memory is correct) what was similar to a town square. And in this town square there were quite a number of people selling fresh fruits and vegetables. Watermelons were a popular item even though they were visited by many flies.

We got off the bus and walked around looking at the items for sale and then found a wall to sit on while sipping cool drinks we had purchased from a vendor. As we sat there, I noticed in a nearby doorway a woman leaning against the edge of the open framework, a very old woman. It was an opportunity for a great photo of human interest. She was quite thin; her skin was brown from the sun and the wrinkles were profoundly deep on her face and arms. Her dress was a very simple cotton cloth covering, no special design. Her feet were bare. What caught my attention was the brilliant light in her eyes as she watched the tourists wandering around. They were happy eyes, smiling eyes, as she looked on.

All those countless storytelling wrinkles, sun darkened skin and simple presence was so clearly someone who was untouched by society, by false faces of social pressures or by caring one iota whether she was approved of in any way. She appeared serenely happy and by the probable appearance of her age, she was most likely somewhat wise from all that she had seen and experienced in her passage through life. This is what I saw when I looked at her and have never forgotten, her beauty, true beauty of soul, and the experiences of her life. All this was written in each wrinkle and projected through her twinkling eyes.

We in modern society don’t embrace aging so gracefully and when I begin to fuss with the telling results of the aging process my body reveals to me, there are times I remember this wonderful woman I once encountered and in whom I saw the absolute beauty of aging.

Aging is not a death knell to beauty and life; it is the artistic painting of the soul’s journey through the body.