With all the things caregivers are responsible for there’s enough to worry about without having to deal with the pressures brought on by the anti-aging (beauty) industry.
Can anti-aging products turn back the hands of time?
Honestly, have you ever seen someone regress in age? Except when we fifty-somethings act like youngsters or lose our memories to dementia–what’s wrong with accepting the natural flow of our lives?
What happens when we try to stop a stream from flowing? The water has to go somewhere; otherwise, it becomes stagnant.
Our experiences carve unique lines upon our faces. Instead of embracing these lines as our unique signature in life, we shun our facial (finger) prints and spend billions annually on cosmetics and procedures to hide these unique markings upon our faces–our palette of life.
We start waging the anti-aging battle at Midlife
Why do we spend $1,000s a year on face creams with retinol, thickening cures to stop hair from thinning, and facelifts and Botox to erase the lines of life upon our faces?
Facelifts turn Caucasians into Asians.
Clenched jaws from chins pulled tight
prevent our faces from smiling with all our might.
Meanwhile, hair coloring, meant to lessen the shock of white hairs sprouting prematurely, is used well-beyond its time.
Like Betty White, there comes a time
when our natural hair color is like fine wine –
the graceful product of life’s hard line.
When our skin grows paler
and our expressions looser,
our faces deserve to be framed by nature
in beautiful white, gray, or silver.
How are we different from the Emperor with no clothes?
Is a facial followed by a $100 one-ounce bottle of beauty cream really going to keep our face looking noticeably younger? Doesn’t a steaming hot washcloth with moisturizing soap accomplish the same thing for a fraction of the cost and time?
George Carlin on Aging
The late comedian, George Carlin, pointed out that there are two times in our lives when we brag about growing older: first, while we’re teenagers wanting to look older, and second, after we stop buying green bananas and celebrate the months between our birth anniversaries: I’m one hundred and a half!
In 2012, I wrote, The harder we try to look younger on the outside, the more stressed we feel on the inside, which makes us look older on the outside.
Isn’t the anti-aging industry promoting standards that stress us and shorten our lives? I envision the annual salmon migration upstream to lay eggs only to be eaten by a hungry bear or die of exhaustion.
What kind of life is that?
Some people
try to turn back their odometers.
Not me!
I want people to know why
I look this way.
I’ve traveled a long way
and some of the roads weren’t paved.
Author Unknown
And for a related FUNNY take on being healthy and staying young, read, Kelly Maclean’s Surviving Whole Foods
Caregivers have enough to worry about. We want to hear from you.
