“Do you have anything for wrinkles?” the older woman asked me, leaning over the cosmetics counter and looking at bottles filled with lotions and potions.
“Our skincare program is the best place to start,” I said, indicating our three-step regimen and then picking up another bottle. “In addition, this moisturizer will help reduce the appearance of tiny, fine lines.”
My sales trainer, if she could have heard me at that moment, would have been so pleased. “Never use the word ‘wrinkles’,” she told our class of trainees. “Instead, use the phrase ‘tiny, fine lines.’”
I'm pretty sure I gave a mental shrug. I was a 21-year-old college student after all. I had no fine lines, laugh lines, or any other kind of lines to speak of.
German novelist and short story writer Franz Kafka said, "Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old."
Kafka often wrote about existential and surrealist themes, so it surprises me a little that this quote came from him. But nonetheless I like it.
Never growing old sure sounds good to me, especially since today is my birthday and I now have fine lines of my own.
As I look back on my many-ish years, one thing I know is this: I want to keep that ability to see the beauty around me. I want to actively look for beauty, to cultivate a childlike sense of wonder.
I don’t want to become jaded, or hard, or bored, Lord forbid.
Rather, I want a heart that will always be moved by things like waterfalls, water lily paintings, and Handel’s Water Music. And be deeply grateful for them.
A heart that’s young with a face that’s wrinkled? In that case, those lines are fine with me.
What about you? Do you have any remedies for growing older?
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