Every day you read about all the different possibilities presented to you with the aim of almost “stopping time”, of making you stay young longer, of keeping you healthier and more active. Botox, plastic surgery, exercise machines, gym training, creams, serums and tablets. All wonderful things, aren’t they? Nevertheless, time passes and age keeps moving forward.
It is interesting, and scary at the same time, to ponder about such inexorable passing of time and, in particular, about advancing age. When you are very young, you are unaware, you don’t have the conception of time. You live in the “eternal present” (as it should actually be throughout your whole life).
When you grow up, you start realizing, experimenting, that there is a “past” and that there is also a “future” that you should start taking into consideration, if you want to make plans for your career or think about a family of your own. Then… you are “established”! You have a job and a family, but you still keep making plans in order to improve your overall situation, whatever it might be. Later, you begin thinking of retirement, while your “horizon” is still quite wide.
Not only don’t you see, but you don’t even perceive — on a practical level — that such horizon will soon start shrinking. But… it eventually does. Reaching the “older” age can be a positive happening because it means that you have “lived”, that you have had the opportunity to experience life at length. You have done many things, met lots of people, seen different places, tasted ethnic food, listened to diverse music.
You have eagerly followed the fashion of the time and now, when you look at old photos, you see yourself dressed up in either baggy pants or tight jeans, huge pullovers or skimpy tops, padded shoulders, showing off in an “Afro” hairstyle or straight hair, big sideburns and a beard or a totally shaved head. “Is that me?”, you wonder. You can hardly recognize yourself, yet you remember those days with a sort of sweet melancholy feeling and you enjoy lingering in the memories.
You realize how much time has passed, how many things have drastically changed in your life and you become suddenly aware that not too much time is left for new things to happen, for too many changes to take place. The end is drawing closer and you can’t help realizing that you need to start preparing yourself for the shrinking of your horizon.
Your mind is still able to soar through wide spaces but your body, no matter how active and healthy you are, is preparing itself to accept major transformations that will eventually take you to the “Arrival” line. What should your feelings be toward such a situation, when it materializes? Hard to say, because people are incredibly different.
Nevertheless, the main feelings that I believe should be created (if it does not already exist) and carefully nursed are — first of all — “acceptance” of the inevitable, followed by “gratitude” for what you have been granted throughout the course of your life; then, “appreciation” for the good times as well as for the not-so-good times. You have enjoyed the former but you recognize that the latter have been necessary to reach the point you are presently at. And it is a very good point, indeed!
Finally, “faith” is the last and possibly most important element of this kind of “agenda”. Every human being, in fact, needs the certainty that nothing is over, that nothing is ever over. What the individual has been will remain forever, engraved in the deep fabric of the Universe. That is why it is so important, for each of us, to try to sculpt the work of art that is our life as well as we can so that, towards the end, we shall be able to give it the best finishing touch.
Then… what? Then we, “you” shall come up with a “sculpture” worth of Michelangelo’s “David”. Could also your life turn into a masterpiece? It depends on “who” you think you are and “what” you are capable of doing. Michelangelo never doubted himself. DO YOU?
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