Tattoos of Age

 

May 3, 2018

I see beauty in wrinkles; 

the lines that scar the faces of the elderly. 

When I glimpse an elderly lady knitting ferociously, her hands moving in unison, following the patterns they have mastered over years of use, I notice her face. There is a story etched into her body, the tattoos of age. Scars from a life lived: experience, which became memories, which became wisdom.

When I see the elderly man drinking coffee with an old friend, I see the beauty of his ancient skin. His eyes peer out onto a familiar world; a world he has watched tear itself apart, mend itself, only to begin tearing at itself again. His face shows the years: the years of war, of joy, of hardship, of love. Memories are carved into his old flesh by the greatest sculptor, Time. 

We live in a culture that adores youth. There is an innocence to youth, to be sure. There is unearned confidence, a naïve bravado. In youth, there is hope for the future, unrealized plans. The young look to the horizon and race towards it. There is much to be praised in youth, but there is profound beauty only in the elderly. 

Like stars of the heavens, the elderly look at us, ablaze in a beautiful luminescence the light of which can only reach us with the passage of time.