If you feel rather vain about your physical appearance, you’ll naturally want to preserve whatever physical advantage such good fortune has bestowed on you.
You can’t help but be proud (if not, well, downright conceited) that nature has so kindly functioned in your favor. Sure, you’ve taken care not to overeat or otherwise test the fragility that your close-to-ideal appearance might harbor. But growing older—not mentally, but physically—isn’t anything you could possibly look forward to. How, after all, could you look forward to advancing age when you know there’s no way that the passing of time could improve your physical appearance? In fact, you’re regrettably all too aware that what you can expect is quite the contrary.
There’s no doubt, then, that while growing old—or, at least, older—is generally conducive to achieving greater wisdom and sophistication, its physical downsides are also undeniable.
Rationally speaking, people may not desire to trade this more meaningful, lasting mental advantage for the less permanent physical one. But living in a culture that celebrates youth and beauty (just watch a few TV ads to see whether any other conclusion is warranted), it’s all too clear that looking youthful is more associated with both success and status than merely looking wise. We might envy Einstein’s super intelligence, but hardly wish to look like him.
Of course, you could endeavor to defy aging, maybe through plastic surgery or applying wrinkle-erasing makeup. And—who knows?—that might be enough to fool others about your true age. But it’s a much harder challenge to fool yourself.
Consequently, the best solution is to graciously accept the only direction that aging moves in. But how is this remedy accomplished?
In the end, it’s mostly a matter of reexamining the benefits versus costs of clinging to what, sooner or later, will be beyond your control. As you age—as everyone ages—your physical appearance ages along with you. And that you can count on. It’s coordinated with the unalterable fact of our mortality.
If acceptance of yourself is to be unconditional, you’re obliged to affirm this inescapable fact of existence. You may not—at least, not yet—be able to celebrate this reality, but perhaps you can learn to affirm it as intrinsic to your being.
This is what life asks of you. You can resist it, but if you refuse to give up, you can be sure that the conditions of your life also won’t give up. And the odds are minuscule—actually, they don’t even exist— that you could ever get the better of life itself. For, basic principles of existence are invariable and not subject to your will or wishes.
You can hold these principles at bay for a while—maybe even a long while—but they always emerge victorious. And that’s why it’s crucial to get in line with them, so you can’t be defeated.
© 2025 Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.