I love how you’re aging

I absolutely love how people age. Those lines capturing all your expressions over the years you’ve been alive. It’s like a collection of tattoos, mapping out your life experiences across your face.

My friends are now sprouting little grey hair, blooming from their heads. The furrowed brow of many years of concentration. The dark circles from sleepless nights (of excitement, partying, or anxiety). The gaining weight to keep you warm and sturdy. The age, freckled sun spots from enjoying days at the beach.

I’m grateful I get to watch my mother and aunts age (I really do think you are beautiful, for the record). And I got to see my grandmother and great aunts age. The aging process keeps going past middle age into another kind of firmly rooted beauty, if you’re lucky.

I know being young is the kind of obvious beautiful. Young is filled with potential or fertility or whatever. I know the temptation of wanting to look perpetually young, the never ending desire to remain encapsulated in time. (It’s a societal expectation, after all.)

But goodness, even with all it’s aches, pains, and slowing down — I really do love seeing the aging process.

You know that phrase, your soul is just having a human experience? I imagine our souls are enjoying all of the earthly delights. Tasting desserts. Dancing with our kids. Skiing down a hill. Petting all the animals. Watching all the trashy TV. Building community. Being in love and heartbreak. It’s all captured in you, and showing up on you. And the older you are, it becomes a beautiful kaleidoscope of a deeply grooved, deeply rooted version of you.

These human bodies are here for such a short amount of time and their sole/soul purpose is constant change. And I love it! I love watching it on you and me. And I hope you know how beautiful you were as a youngin’, and DAMN IT, how absolutely stunning you’re becoming.

(I mean it. I’m not pulling your leg. I really feel this way and I hope you do too.)