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 as a compliment or use “old” as shorthand for boring, outdated, or unattractive.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 

Languishing-a state that many experience but have had no name for

I came across the NY Times article by Adam Grant about languishing. My classmate from the wellness coaching certification program mentioned this during one of our live sessions. The article raises some interesting points, especially about mental health. Most of us have a perception that if we are not under depression, or not facing any anxiety or panic attacks our mental health is fine and we don't need to do anything about it. However, this may not be the case, mental health is also an ongoing saga just like our physical health. In the same way, as it is not enough to have one healthy meal or one gym session to remain physically fit, we need to practice these things regularly to reap any benefits from it. In the same way, for better mental health we need to work continuously, every day on it. There is a spectrum of mental health and we need to recognize which band of the spectrum, we are dealing with on any given day. We may be happy someday, sad another, or not so sure on some days,. That is why the phrase "languishing" is so important, it defines our mental state where we are not sure, we are neither happy nor sad, neither depressed nor upbeat, neither anxious nor calm, somewhere in between. It is important to acknowledge our mental state because if we don't, it does not fend away future problems, it only postpones the crises. One of the reasons for this is that even though we live in the world of social media, personally, each of us lives in a more isolated mental world than before.  

This is why it becomes more important to acknowledge and examine our cultural burdens. There is a stigma associated with anything related to mental health in many cultures. The stigma is so high that even something like genuine mental fatigue is perceived as laziness or sloppiness, but not mental fatigue. It's not just about the stigma, it's about the conditioning our mind goes through due to the toxic environment this stigma creates. 

I grew up in an environment where mental health was never ever discussed, people were either sane or insane, nothing in between. If you had any mental health-related issue, you were labeled as insane, anyone committing suicide was labeled as weak, escapist, and whatnot. This environment created a very negative image of mental health-related issues in my mind, it took a lot of time, reading, and discussions to override this negative image, and I am grateful to my kids for educating me about this issue. I have traveled a long journey to overcome that negative perception, many books, videos, and discussions, and now I am doing a wellness counseling certification course, the journey has been an exciting and rewarding experience for me. Not only did I learn a lot about myself and my behavior, but now I also understand others' behavior in a much better way.  

So, don't hesitate to express your emotional state, it's not always that we feel good, the answer to "how are you" doesn't have to be a standard answer, it can be different every day, or even different at different times of the day. In a way, we all can help each other to improve our mental fitness, just a little understanding and compassion can go a long way, give a little pause to our judgmental instincts, and try to understand each other rather than judge. This one small step can do a lot of good. We all languish, but we did not have a name for this feeling, now we have it, let's use it.

Thank you for reading. Please share your opinions on this topic. 

We all are transgenders in someway

While watching this program on NDTV about the situation of transgenders in Indian society, I was wondering what is the reason these people are so stereotyped that they can't live a normal life in most societies around the world. By normal life, I mean getting the same treatment and opportunities that most of us so-called "normal" or "cisgender" people get. In India, most of them are forced into the sex trade or live in ghettos because of the way society treats them. Why it is so difficult for any society to accept them as equal citizens or for that matter why we are so apprehensive about anything that doesn't fit the age-old definition of "normal"? Who decides what is normal and what is not? Is most common mean normal and something uncommon becomes abnormal? We need to ask such questions to counter this narrative which has been going on uninterrupted for centuries. It is really sad to see that some people among us get discriminated against for something natural. They face various difficulties and problems not because of their mistakes or actions, but just because of who they are. This attitude of they are different than us or they are not normal, so they can't be with us or our kids will become like them needs to be questioned, everyone needs to get a fair chance to fulfill their ambitions and desires, as a society it is our responsibility to create such environment. Most of us agree with this statement, but as a society, our behavior doesn't match this statement.

Sex is determined by DNA and gender is something how we present ourselves in society, both don't need to match. We are taught and conditioned on how men or women should behave or conduct themselves in society. We are taught what is masculine and what is feminine, based on this conditioning we develop our own perception of our own gender and also try to define other's gender. This perception and stereotyping also decide what we call normal and what we consider abnormal. We are also trained to reject, denounce, or stay away from these so-called abnormal people. Most of us follow all these traditions or rules without even giving any serious thought or consideration about their logic and relevance. Many of us fail to question these perceptions which are passed on to us by our society. We follow them as part of tradition or culture, but we never bother to check their relevance or validity. Once anything whether it is good or bad becomes a part of tradition or culture it stays there for a long time. Many societies also develop some protective attitudes towards such traditions as they consider them an integral part of their identity. This is one of the main reasons why many people hesitate to question these things openly. I agree that it is not easy to challenge or fight against ancient traditions and rituals, but if they are wrong someone needs to challenge them. But the problem is that there is not a very conducive environment in most societies that can encourage questioning or dissent, rather few who dare to question have to face many hostile reactions. Transgenders are victims of such wrong traditions and misconceptions. According to me, we all have some transgender qualities in some way or other, therefore, it should be easy for all cisgender to relate with transgenders, provided we overcome all our prejudices and biases. We all possess a unique set of qualities, there is no defined set of masculine and feminine qualities which are exclusive to any one particular sex. A variety of feelings or characteristics can be found in both sexes. We all are sensitive, tough, stupid or intelligent, fearless or cowardice, strong or weak, introverted or extrovert our gender doesn't define these things. We all are capable of displaying feelings of tenderness, vulnerability, fear, jealousy, and envy to different extents on different occasions. We all have many characteristics that people associate only with transgenders we are a mixture of qualities that are normally classified as masculine or feminine. We just don't fit into that stereotyped definition of transgender that people have created by combining some emotional and physical characteristics. But just because some people show physical or emotional characteristics of both sexes more than others, we should not label them as abnormal. These people are as normal as any of us, just maybe not as common as many of us. Uncommon doesn't mean abnormal. They are in the minority, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve equal rights and recognition. We need to remove this prejudice and bias, we all need to recognize that there is nothing wrong or abnormal in being cisgender, transgender, or any other gender. Most common doesn't necessarily mean normal and uncommon doesn't mean abnormal. Let's remove these barriers and become a more inclusive society where every individual is accepted regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Let's start with ourselves, let's embrace and understand our fellow humans irrespective of their gender, sexual orientation, religion, race, or any other thing that we use to categorize us. Let's show love and respect towards each other, after all, we all are humans, and let's behave as humans. 

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]