Having founded a company that teaches techniques that help roll back the years and keep the face as youthful as possible (naturally), I think about what ageing means to me on a pretty regular basis.
These days, we don’t like to talk about anti-ageing, we talk about pro-ageing, and celebrating ageing. At Luminous, our focus is on looking and feeling your best at every age and stage of your life, not about trying to look twenty when you’re sixty! However…
I need to be very honest with myself, and with you…I do have to work hard to be okay with signs of ageing, greying hair, little lines and wrinkles, changing body etc. Lately, I have been trying really hard to understand what it is about signs of ageing that creates a negative reaction given that I actually love being the age I am and I have never been happier.
I am 39, and honestly feel more content in myself and in my life than I ever did in my 20s. I did my fair share of partying, but I was always more of a home girl. I had a career I was good at and I enjoyed, yet I knew that for me, my real calling in life and my core contentment would come from being a good mother, good wife, and creating a wonderful home life for my family. This is the situation I am in now, and I am so looking forward to the years ahead, watching my little family grow and develop and all the milestones that lie ahead.
Ageing is a HUGE privilege, one I am particularly aware of at the moment, as someone very close to me and younger than me is about to lose their fight with cancer, and yet, I still have to work to be okay with ageing.
Why?
I finally know the answer. It isn’t out of vanity, or the desire to be younger than I am. It is because I LOVE life. I love every little aspect of life, from the little things, like watching my vegetables grow, my morning coffee, a cold and frosty morning, to the big things, like how much I love being with my family.
Visible signs of ageing are a reminder that life is short, and finite and one day, our time with everyone and everything that we love, will run out.
How we choose to deal with ageing is up to us. For me, it is about keeping my body and face as fit and healthy as possible, preventing unnecessary, and premature signs of ageing, working on my self-esteem and peace of mind. And of course, the big one, living life to the full. Ageing is an inevitability and the older we are, the more chances we have had to have experienced incredible things, and I will always remind myself how fortunate that is.
This may seem a rather morbid post, but I think our relationship with ageing is complicated, and I sometimes get fed up with people oversimplifying the issues around ageing and how we should feel about it.
Philippa x