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How You View Others May Determine Your Age

March 17, 2015 By colorado

How you view others may determine your age
© Glow images – Model used for illustrative purposes only.

Recently, I was on my way to the barbershop, ok hair-stylist, talking with a family member about graying hair. I’m sporting a bit of salt and pepper and we were laughing about how that makes men look more distinguished. It turns out although she has beautiful brown hair, she has been graying longer than she wanted to admit and has been frequenting a hair colorist ever since.  Many of us can empathize.

Here’s the thing: she is youthful, vibrant, a great conversationalist, and beautiful – and those qualities don’t change just because she started to have gray hair in her twenties.  Yet, in society today, the general bias around things like gray hair often has at least a subconscious effect on age and perception.

 Challenging the Age Bias

A recent article in the Denver Business Journal tackled this very bias, surmising that in order to succeed in business women must color their hair so as not to appear too old.  One solution– women should join together and boycott their hair colorists, relying on “strength in numbers” to break this age bias.

 As appealing as this type of solution might be, it doesn’t really get to the heart of the issue.  Age bias and the fear that goes along with it come from the assumption that aging means de facto deterioration of our faculties, medical dependency, and so on. To address the bias we should be talking not just about looking younger, but actually questioning the assumption that deterioration is inevitably linked to aging.

Mary Baker Eddy, a deep thinker who studied and explored what the Bible says about eternal life and how it applies to daily life, wrote almost a century ago, “The continual contemplation of existence as material and corporeal – as beginning and ending, and with birth, decay, and dissolution as its component stages – hides the true and spiritual Life, and causes our standard to trail in the dust.”

Most people can get on board for changing how age is contemplated. Most of us intrinsically feel there is a mental component to aging – i.e. how you think and act has a direct effect on your youthfulness.

So results of studies like Counterclockwise by Harvard Psychology Professor Dr. Ellen Langer, that show that the way you think about age has direct physical effects, don’t seem so out of the ordinary today.  And incidentally, the result of her study was that participants in their late 70s to early 80s who took a wholesale approach to changing their perception of aging (including the very conversations they had) resulted in measurable improvement in their hearing, vision, thought process and even physical strength.

But the idea of “spiritual Life” Eddy speaks of is something foreign or at least abstract to many, although it may hold the key to not only looking younger, but actually feeling that way.

Lessons I’ve learned about agelessness

When I was 30 I decided to begin attending a weekly community group, let’s call the group…a “church.” When I just wasn’t finding inroads into a cliquish peer group, I decided to tap into a group of members who had been part of the community for decades, many unafraid to show off a bit of their gray hair.

I looked at these selfless workers and saw that they ran the church, held services for anyone and for Sunday School students, did community outreach and lovingly maintained a 100 year old building located just a block from the capitol.  And, they did it tirelessly and with joy, never complaining about soreness, exhaustion, frustration.  They just cared for their church and its members.  This seemed like a group that had tapped into a fountain of youth.  They certainly had more energy and enthusiasm than I had.

But how to fit in? As I deepened my understanding of my own “spiritual life” and of how I saw these members, I could see that from a spiritual standpoint we were neither young or old. We were each and all just the eternal image of our Creator. I decided to make a concerted effort not to treat this group of church members as if there was an age difference between us. That’s not to say I treated them as if they were the same age, but I worked to treat them as I wanted to be treated, Golden Rule style.  I would speak with respect, because I wanted to be respected.  I treated them honestly and humbly, and I assumed these fledgling friends were wise and principled, because that’s how I viewed myself and so how I wanted to be viewed. 

The result? Well, I became a member of that church and served, and still serve, side by side with those members. But in retrospect, I was only able to do this because they didn’t see me as too young or inexperienced; they didn’t judge that I hadn’t served the church for 40 or 50 years. They just took me in, Golden Rule style.

But there was something else?

What I learned is that those members were not looking at age at all.  In fact, not once in 15 years of being at this church has any of them even disclosed his or her age to me. They looked not at my age, but at my qualities; they were judging whether I was diligent, patient, compassionate, perseverant – I suspect. And when I passed the test, or at least made a sincere effort, I was in the club.

And in this new community I served on many committees and the executive board, ran services and taught Sunday School, all while juggling a busy law career.  My secret to better endurance and perseverance, just like my fellow church members, was and is all about how I view those spiritual qualities that come from reliance on a spiritual Life.  “Though youths grow weary and tired, and vigorous young men stumble badly, yet those who wait for God, will gain new strength…” (Isaiah) seems to say it well.

David Price writes on the connection between health, thinking and spirituality. A former attorney, David is the media and legislative representative for Christian Science in Colorado. David is also a Christian Science practitioner with an expertise in prayer-based healing.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Age, aging, church, Counterclockwise, energy, God, Golden Rule, gray, gray hair, hearing, improvement, Mary Baker Eddy, mental, qualities, spiritual, spiritual Life, strength, tireless, vision

Comments

  1. Margarita Thatcher says

    March 29, 2015 at 7:05 pm

    Not only are these ideas thought-provoking, but practical and ‘doable’! I’m sharing them with others. Interesting to read about the “Counterclockwise” study by Harvard Prof. Dr. Ellen Langer.

  2. colorado says

    March 18, 2015 at 10:38 am

    Thanks for your insights into aging, they are very inspiring and a good addition to the article.

  3. colorado says

    March 18, 2015 at 10:37 am

    Thank you for taking the time to read and respond Fay!

  4. Robert Reiman says

    March 18, 2015 at 9:58 am

    I ran into the subject of “aging” in my twenties when the subject of birthdays came up. The question came to me, “Why celebrate another year?” What’s different yesterday than tomorrow? Well — everyone does it. It celebrates my —— my what? Anyway, what does age accomplish? It is administratively convent to tell when someone is old enough to go to school, to drive a car, etc. It also try’s to tell us when to stop working, when to stop driving, when to stop living. And yet we all admit that age doesn’t really tell us any of those things. So shortly after that, I stopped celebrating birthdays. And now, many years later, I hear of “the big 40” “the big 50” etc and hear the resignation in voices of what those events indicate–limitation, down the hill, loss. And I realize that I must have passed those “events” without any thought at all. Just kept living life fully each day. And not limiting myself by giving thought to aging or the aging process. What freedom I have and am experiencing.

  5. Fay says

    March 17, 2015 at 9:17 pm

    Very helpful and altering article. Thank you for the insights and spiritual direction.

  6. Kathryn Knox says

    March 17, 2015 at 7:05 pm

    So worth pondering. What do our thoughts rest on all day? Comparisons, limitations, or freedom and strength?

  7. colorado says

    March 17, 2015 at 3:13 pm

    Thanks so much for your comment!

  8. Phoebe says

    March 17, 2015 at 3:07 pm

    I loved the article, David. Being who we are, as opposed to how old, is a quality I see in most of my friends and colleagues. Thank you for the reminder.

  9. colorado says

    March 17, 2015 at 12:38 pm

    Thanks for the insight Joel.

  10. Joel Belmont says

    March 17, 2015 at 12:37 pm

    Great article. I’m a firm believer in abandoning the human concept of age (material limitation). I can’t tell you my age, because I work every year to forget it and leave it out of thought, even when friends want to celebrate it. Any day of the year is a great day to celebrate progress, but my true being is without limitations – and my goal is to see, acknowledge and reveal more of that truth in my human experience. Thanks again for the article and inspiration.

  11. colorado says

    March 17, 2015 at 12:30 pm

    Thanks Carol.

  12. Carol Keeney says

    March 17, 2015 at 12:29 pm

    When we want to get a job done and are looking for helpers, we naturally think of the qualities and talents others have. Age often has no bearing at all. We value others and ourselves not according to a calendar. Ageless being is really going on, right now.

David L. Price writes about health care for online and print media. David focuses on topics that address how thinking and spirituality influence health.

Mr. Price is also the media and government representative for Christian Science in Colorado.

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