The other day I found myself doing something I rarely do: comparing my face to photographs from my twenties.

At first, I noticed what most people notice. My hairline seemed slightly different. My skin looked different. Certain features had softened, others become more defined. Nothing dramatic. Just the subtle fingerprints of time.

And yet I could feel the familiar cultural script trying to take hold: It’s catching up to you.

For most of my life, people told me I looked much younger than my age. It became a kind of running joke. But jokes have a way of turning into identities, and identities have a way of becoming fragile. Somewhere along the line, I realized I had unconsciously accepted a bargain: as long as I looked young, I could postpone thinking about aging.

The photographs interrupted that bargain.

Around the same time, I found myself at the gym looking around at what appeared to be an endless parade of youth. Long flowing hair. Sculpted leggings. Bodies carefully displayed and accentuated. Everyone seemed to be advertising something.

I remember wondering, advertising to whom?

I couldn’t imagine working out with my hair hanging in my face. I couldn’t imagine spending an hour exercising while adjusting clothing designed to draw attention to my nether regions. I had to catch myself and live and let live – you do you, girl – yet for a moment I found myself measuring my own femininity against these symbols.

More importantly, I wondered why I felt so outside of it.

Then a different question arose.

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What if I was confusing youth with vitality?

Youth vs. Vitality

Youth and vitality often arrive together, which makes them easy to mistake for one another.

Youth is largely given.

It is collagen and hormones. Quick recovery and resilient skin. Hair density and biological abundance. It arrives before we have done anything to earn it.

Vitality is something else entirely.

Vitality is aliveness.

It is the sparkle in someone’s eye when they are genuinely interested in the world. It is curiosity. Creativity. Engagement. The willingness to feel deeply. The desire to keep learning. The impulse to plant a garden, write a poem, start a conversation, make new friends, learn a new skill, fall in love.

A person can possess youth and have very little vitality. A young person can be disconnected from life, from themselves. They can be numb to their emotions, distant from the very forces that nurture movement.

Likewise, I have met older people who radiate vitality so strongly that their age becomes irrelevant. Their faces may carry wrinkles, but their spirits remain in motion. They are still becoming.

As I sat with this distinction, I realized something surprising.

At twenty, I had more youth than I do now, but I have a great deal more vitality than ever before.

Today I move my body because I value my health, not because I am trying to punish it into a particular shape. I understand nutrition in ways I never did. I am more emotionally aware. More discerning. More capable of meaningful relationships. More creative. More reflective. I have finally embraced my capacity to feel deeply.

My life is far from perfect, but it is far more intentional.

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Myth of Aging: Cultural Narrative vs Reality

If my body is healthier, my habits healthier, my relationships healthier, and my mind healthier than they were fifteen years ago, then in what sense am I declining?

This is where our culture often loses me.

We tend to speak of aging and deterioration as though they are synonymous. We treat youth as the highest form of life and everything after as a gradual departure from it.

But that has not been my experience.

My experience has been one of evolution.

Yes, things change. The body changes. The face changes. Time leaves its impressions.

But wisdom grows. Discernment grows. Self-knowledge grows. Compassion grows. The ability to distinguish what matters from what does not grows.

The irony is that many of the people I most admire possess very little youth and an enormous amount of vitality.

They are curious.

They are engaged.

They are still surprised by life.

Perhaps the real task is not preserving youth, not “aging gracefully”, but protecting our vitality from cynicism, fear, bitterness, and disengagement.

After all, a face can grow older while a life grows richer.

And if given the choice, I think I would rather be continuously becoming than merely young.