Aging Can be Cool

Aging is a natural process for every living being. This is the name given to our natural progression from birth to death. It is an unavoidable and natural progression of life; humans have always been comfortable with aging, and age in itself has been a widely respected attribute in many cultures across the world. However, somewhere along the way, we started treating aging like a problem to be solved rather than a journey to be embraced. Wrinkles became something to hide. Grey hair became something to cover. And the word old, once associated with wisdom, experience, and grace, became a synonym for "uncool," "irrelevant," or "unattractive." 

The stigma around aging is louder than ever in today's social media era. People do so many things to hide their age or specifically "not to look old." Entire industries thrive on our collective fear of growing and looking old. What was once targeted at people in their 40s or 50s is now aimed at those as young as 24. We are instilling fear of aging at a very young age. “Start fighting age before it even shows.” This isn’t just marketing - it’s mental conditioning and fear-mongering. We’re teaching people in their twenties to be afraid of looking thirty.

What makes it worse is our casual language. The way we casually use the terms "young" to mean "cool" or "beautiful" and "old"  to mean "dated" or "ugly" creates a perception that being old means uncool and something to be scared of. We say things like “She looks so young for her age!” as a compliment or use “old” as shorthand for boring, outdated, or unattractive. When “young” means cool, beautiful, or worthy, then what does that make “old”? The message sinks in, often unnoticed but deeply felt: growing older means losing value.

This has resulted in people spending considerable portions of their income just on their looks, especially to look younger than their age, as they feel that natural looks for their age are not socially acceptable anymore. And it’s not an equal-opportunity issue. Women, in particular, bear the brunt of this burden. They face more rigid beauty standards, more scrutiny, and more pressure to look forever youthful. Body shaming disproportionately affects women - at work, in relationships, and in society at large. Often, it's not just society doing the shaming, it’s other women, too. The internalized pressure is that strong.

But here’s the truth: aging is not a flaw, it’s a privilege.

People often forget that not everyone gets to grow old. Aging means you’ve lived your life. You’ve endured and survived. You’ve learned and grown. Each wrinkle tells a story. Each grey hair is a milestone. Strength doesn’t only belong to the young; there’s a different kind of strength that grows with age: emotional depth, self-awareness, resilience, perspective, and wisdom. So, how do we change the narrative?

Let's start by changing the connotation of the word old. Being old shouldn’t mean being less than your younger version; it shouldn't mean being uncool, dated, or weak. It should mean being more than your younger self - more experienced, more layered, more compassionate, more poised, more nuanced, more human. We need to stop praising people for “not looking their age” as though looking your age is something shameful. Let’s normalize aging faces, celebrate changing bodies, and value character over cosmetic perfection.

Aging isn’t something to battle or run away from. It’s something to live, experience, and celebrate. And honestly, aging can be cool. We can make it cool: by honoring the people who’ve walked longer roads, by rejecting toxic beauty ideals, and by proudly becoming those people ourselves. Because if we’re lucky, we’ll all get old someday. Everyone wants to live long, so why fear age? Why not make it something worth looking forward to?

Thank you for reading, and please share your views on this topic. 

© Vinay Thakur, All rights reserved. Vinay can be reached at thevinay2022@gmail.com 

Old and beautiful

Getting old is a privilege. Not everyone gets an opportunity to get old and live a fulfilling life. Of course, aging causes many changes to our bodies and minds. Our looks change, we don't look the same as we used to during our younger age, and our health also starts getting affected depending on how much attention we pay to it. We may become more fragile and forgetful, and no matter how careful we are our health may not be the same as it was in our twenties, and we may suffer some personal losses as older people around us die. This may make us more aware of our mortality. While this can be a very daunting realization, it can also act as a powerful motivator to do things that we like and live our lives to the fullest. Our increasing age can encourage us to take more risks and pursue our dreams, knowing that time is precious and not to be wasted.

Getting old offers some more privileges. We have a chance to use our acquired knowledge and wisdom for the benefit of our society. Through a lifetime of experience, we learn valuable lessons about how to navigate the world, and we can share this with others so that they benefit from our experience. If we keep our minds open, we develop a better and deeper understanding of ourselves and others and become better equipped to handle life's challenges. Passing on this wisdom to our younger generation can be a great source of satisfaction and fulfillment.  Many of us spend our younger years rushing from one thing to another, working like crazy to establish ourselves, always striving for success and accomplishment. Depending on our social and family background our struggles take very different paths, and many of us have to charter unknown paths to establish ourselves. But as we age, we learn to appreciate simple things in life and spend some quality time with our loved ones. As we age, we can also try to give back to our communities by volunteering, mentoring young people, or working toward causes we care about. For many, the realization that simple things in life can bring the greatest possible joy can be the biggest privilege of getting old. This sense of purpose and self-realization can be incredibly rewarding and can help us stay engaged and connected to others.

Old age also comes with different looks. Actually, we are supposed to look different at every stage of life, that's a natural process. As we grow old, we are supposed to become more comfortable in our skin. However, with constant brainwashing and stereotyping, most of us have been convinced that looking old is not cool. Most of us are convinced that we should consistently look younger than our age until we die, and looking old means looking sick or weak or whatever but not beautiful. This taboo associated with looking old has forced many to conceal their old-age looks. Especially, women are targeted for aging-related medical or cosmetic procedures. Because of all this, people go for cosmetic surgery or use medications to look younger than their actual age. I am not against using makeup or the desire to look beautiful, but I am against the notion that old is not beautiful and only the young can be beautiful. If this is not stereotyping age-related looks then I wonder what it is. People don't hesitate to display their wealth, knowledge, or heritage but they shy away from showing their age when there is nothing as natural as aging. So, be old and beautiful, and be comfortable about your own age and looks, after all, the world is moving towards more natural food, a natural way of living, then, why not more natural looks. 

Thank you for reading and please share your views on this topic. 

© Vinay Thakur, All rights reserved, Vinay can be reached at thevinay2022@gmail.com 

Privilege of getting old

Getting old is a privilege. Many of us complain about our aging process and lament that our days of youth are over without realizing that not everyone gets an opportunity to get old. Nothing in this universe is permanent, definitely, not humans, we all have an expiry date. Our life is divided into stages, starting from being born to our death, getting old is an important milestone in this process. We don't have to do anything special to get old, the same way as we don't have to do anything special to be born or to become a toddler or to become a teenager. These things happen as time passes after our birth. Among all this, getting old is a special phase, it shows we survived long enough to see our old age and hopefully, in that process gathered some valuable experience that we can share with our younger generation. That is why I say that getting old is a privilege.

Like any other phase of life, being old comes with its own pros and cons. If we are not careful, our health can be an issue in old age, we may find it hard to remain physically active if we remain careless about our health. We need to adjust our lifestyle as per certain conditions and health issues we pick up while getting older. But these are minor discomforts compared to the value we can add to our society while getting older. At older age our life experiences and wisdom are based on our own personal experiences rather than some hearsay, we are supposed to be more mature and wise. Also, we are supposed to understand the value of love and happiness more and behave accordingly. Unfortunately, not everyone behaves accordingly, there are many old people who behave like jerks, and they don't seem to have learned anything as they grow older. But if we learn from our experiences, and try to make this world a better place, this world will be a lot nicer place than what it already is.

Even though getting old is a privilege, people resist showing that they are getting old. Removing skin wrinkles, or hiding them, hair transplants, hair coloring to hide the grayness of hair due to aging, plastic surgeries to look younger, and use of other methods to hide age are no longer limited to film stars, most common people also use these techniques. I am not against the use of these things or using anything to enhance one's looks. However, people seem to equate looking old with looking ugly, I don't know why, but this seems to be the case. I don't see any other reason to hide our age other than the stigma associated with looking old. Cosmetics were supposed to help us to look better, enhance our looks of that age, and not to hide our real faces. Previously film stars used to hide their age to protect their screen image. Many film stars wanted their fans only to remember their young versions, somehow they thought their older versions would not get the love and adulation their younger version received. This is not true, there are many examples where film stars are as popular in their old age with their old looks as they were in their young age. Still, people are scared to show their age. This may sound like I am against cosmetics or people using makeup. However, this is not the case, I agree that people need to feel comfortable with their appearance, but stereotyping old age as an ugly look is not the way to make anyone comfortable with their appearance it is the opposite of it. If you are privileged, don't hide that privilege, let people know about it and benefit from it. There is no shame in displaying your age, remember, not everyone gets an opportunity to get old, if you get that opportunity, let people know about it. Age is just a number, not something to be ashamed of.

Thank you for reading and please share your views on this topic. 

© Vinay Thakur, All rights reserved, Vinay can be reached at thevinay2022@gmail.com