When People Age That Badly

Every time I see it, there are two, virtually automatic responses.   The first is shock.   Shock that someone can go from who they were to who they are now.   The attempt to overlay that face of the man of twenty on that face of the man in his fifties or sixties.   I sit or stand in raw shock.

My second is that I give thanks.  I Give Thanks for my life and my appearance.

A friend of mine, who I have mentioned before posted a photo of himself on Facebook.   He looks old enough to be my father and you would swear he was in his eighties.  He isn’t.

That man is ten years younger than I am.

I recall him when he was in his twenties and thirties.   I recall how attractive he was and all that, and how he was getting married and moving to Canada.

Now, he must be in his late fifties and looks ninety.

When I saw someone I hadn’t seen in many years and he looked so awful, his beauty gone with puffiness and the fact he had untreated diabetes for so long had taken its toll.   However, we looked about the same age.

When I saw another person who had also changed, he didn’t look that much older than I was.

But this man, this man who is younger than I am, posted photos of himself and seemed to be at least eighty.

I know diet is important, and have been a vegetarian most of my life.   The two latter persons I mentioned are not vegetarians.

But the man who posted the images on Facebook was a vegetarian.

So how?

Attitude.

His life must not have been pleasant and he must have made wrong decisions and bad responses.

I realised something the other day.   I can control my responses.   I can’t control what other people say or do. But I can control how I respond.

I can be upset about all sorts of trivial things.  Or, I can stop thinking of them, and focus on something else.

I can control that.   I can keep my spirits high and my outlook positive.  I can do that. It is in my power.

One’s attitude effects their health and their appearance.  I didn’t need to read that, I have seen it.  I’ve seen people who look almost the same today as they did in the 1970s.   But they have just a positive outlook, they are so nice, that one sees the goodness in them shining out.