Why in our culture are we obsessed with denying our age, our time spent on earth, every second precious and hard-earned? Why are we fixated on never looking over 40?
My wrinkles are my currency, my record of accomplishment, my score card, my flag of honor. Age is earned – survival and experience are fundamentally valuable.
I challenge you to respect and honor the full life cycle, to embrace the crone or codger you are working towards becoming, if you’re lucky enough to get there.
Denial of death is denial of life. We are all conceived, and if lucky born. We are luckier still to have the chance to grow through childhood, adolescence, early, mid and late adulthood, and finally pass away. You can get taken down on any day along the way. Its said the likelihood of a human life is as slim as a dolphin in the ocean rising to the surface, catching a hoop with its nose: Precious, rare, and powerful.
Denying aging disconnects you from reality, nature, and true beauty. Sure, do the little things to look your best – keep up on the hygiene and haircuts and shaves – but please, let the “crow’s feet” bless your eyes, let the “frown lines” grace your forehead. Be grateful that your face can express your emotions, that’s it not a frozen, bo-toxed mask. (And let’s find better, positive terms for these proofs of your gathered wisdom and experience.)
Above all, look forward to your death. I know that flies in the face of Western doctrine, but I mean it: Look Forward to Your Death! It’s the only thing in life you can be certain of, even though the details are a mystery.
Perhaps the Grim Reaper is not so grim after all. Life, as we say, is hard (compared to what I always wonder). Death is easy: failure really is impossible. You’ll always succeed in dying, you can make no mistakes; your death will be perfect in its own way. The Reaper merely ushers your way home. If the Reaper appears Grim, perhaps its only an expression of absolute certainty that your time has come, and no compromise is possible at that end.
What does this have to do with Green Living? To change your relationships with the natural world and therefore change the human-made world into a humane one to the best of your ability, you must accept nature’s changes in you. Your body is not your own, it is borrowed from the earth and other species for a time, for your use and pleasure. You are a community of countless organisms, your cells and allied creatures coordinated melodically making up the miracle that is you. All symphonies must end, the players of the orchestra that is your body must also rest, disperse, and decay.
Humility is the foundation of true strength. Take up your full power and remake the world into a place worth living in for centuries to come.
Green Living Forever 
Alexa Weinstein said,
January 11, 2011 at 2:54 pm
Kevin! This is very inspiring. I have recently become very aware of this one line in my face that is involved in both smiling and frowning. Thanks for helping me to feel proud and thankful toward it. Also, I had never heard the dolphin version, but I have long been obsessed by this quote, from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rimpoche: “Every spiritual tradition has stressed that this human life is unique, and has a potential that ordinarily we hardly even begin to imagine. If we miss the opportunity this life offers us for transforming ourselves, they say, it may well be an extremely long time before we have another. Imagine a blind turtle, roaming the depths of an ocean the size of the universe. Up above floats a wooden ring, tossed to and fro on the waves. Every hundred years the turtle comes, once, to the surface. To be born a human being is said by Buddhists to be *more* difficult than for that turtle to surface accidentally with its head poking through the wooden ring. And even among those who have a human birth, it is said, those who have the great good fortune to make a connection with the teachings are rare; and those who really take them to heart and embody them in their actions even rarer, as rare, in fact, ‘as stars in broad daylight.’ “
Kevin Duell said,
January 11, 2011 at 5:13 pm
Glad I could make your wrinkles happy Alexa.
Thanks for the fine Tibetan reference. That was the story I was thinking of. Obviously the dolphin was my invention! Blind turtle it is!
Rosemary DiCandilo said,
February 15, 2011 at 3:33 pm
Kevin!
Absolutely fabulous piece and great timing for me! How is it that we don’t know ourselves as an evolutionary energy field passing into and out of form able to be conscious of itself? Thanks for speaking forth from potentiality.
Kevin Duell said,
February 15, 2011 at 3:45 pm
My Pleasure Rosemary. Thanks for your generous comments!