If I’m only 7 years old, why do I look so OLD?

Aging might be desirable after all.

Joan came to me complaining that she’d tried everything she could find to slow the aging process. She felt that she was getting “old.” By old, she meant that her body looked wrinkled and withered – no longer fresh and alive as it did when she was in her twenties. Now she was in her sixties and wanted to look 10-20 years younger.

She had tried wrinkle creams of all sorts and varieties – spending small fortunes in the process and making herself a standard figure in the local health food stores. Joan’s body was healthy and vibrant – she exercised regularly and ate sensibly. For the most part, she had a pretty good outlook about life although three marriages had dented her psyche a little. Now a single woman, she felt concerned about her looks.

Jane called me to complain that she was “old and ugly” now that she was 30. She said that she was no longer desirable – a cow she called herself. She was so worried that by the time she got to the ripe old age of 40 she’d be totally wasted – fat, ugly, and a “never been.” Jane was single. She reported dating a few times yet her underlying sense of being “old before my time” consumed her. Like Joan, Jane exercised regularly and paid attention to her diet. She, too, had tried a myriad of creams, and etc., on her skin to slow the aging process she felt was killing her.

Certainly there is a societal bias afoot here that these two women bought into fully. That bias is that aging is bad and that we must hold on to our youth for as long as we can so we can be okay. The signs of aging often include changes in skin, eyesight, digestion, patterns of thought, etc.

It’s the patterns of thought I want to address here.

As one thinks, one’s body will tend to respond so as to model that pattern of thought. Because we don’t want to take the time nor effort to explore those thoughts and the effects such thoughts may bring about, we simply enjoy the results of those thought patterns as “aging.”

You might look at signs of aging as signs of thought pattern changes. Because we are dynamic creatures – seeking and effecting change daily – changes in thought patterns are usually welcomed after an initial resistance. Stuckness or becoming stuck in a thought pattern can be quite destructive to the psyche and body. We are built physically and mentally for change – adaptation – evolution in action.

When our bodies show change, we can be assured that there is a mental change associated with that physical change. Certainly not all change is welcome change. A change from good healthy tissue to diseased tissue is not welcome change. Still, it is change. And if I can change to one state of body/mind, I can change to another. All that is required is some awareness and process.

As I’ve grown older, my body has changed significantly from the body I inhabited as a young man in my teens and twenties. My body is showing signs of what I would call aging. The truth is that there is no cell in my body older than 7 years old. There is no atom in my body older than about 36 hours old. What I’m seeing in my body is not age – unless you consider 7 years as old. Rather, what I’m seeing in my body is the result of my thinking patterns – my choices based on my underlying fundamental beliefs.

Because my body looks differently than it did in my youth signals me that I am changing my fundamental beliefs about my current conditions. I am creating my body with my basic thought patterns every day – molding my body into what I believe I am day-to-day.

That means my body is a book, if you will, of my basic thought patterns. Unfortunately for me, I was not schooled in “body” as I was English. I look at my body book and say to myself, “What’s going on here?” I wonder to myself why I look and feel as I do day-to-day. I don’t realize that I already know the language of my body and can use it to align my body and mind together. You see, I really don’t have any idea on a conscious level what I am thinking even moment to moment. My body does, though; and it shows it all the time.