How’d that old man get in my photos?!

For a moment I was ready to turn around and head back to the Fred Meyer photo counter with an angry demand that I be given my digital camera printouts, not the ones belonging to some old geezer who seemed vaguely familiar, but clearly wasn't me.

Except, after the moment passed and my mind jumped back to aging reality, I realized that he was. Me.

This is a new experience – looking at a photo of myself, or seeing myself in a mirror, and thinking, "Who the hell is that?"

Previously, I've thought "That doesn't look like me." But now it takes me a while to even recognize myself as me, the disconnect between how I believe I look and how I really look being so great.

I suppose this is normal.

Eventually, as the years go by, we pass over a mental image dividing line of some sort. On one side is the psychological person who has barely aged a bit; on the other side is the physical person who looks disturbingly old.

Like most men, and more than a few women, in many respects I'm still 18. I'm still immature and irresponsible. I still look at girls a third my age with lust in my heart (and other bodily organs).

The only difference from my teenage years is, I'm 59. Aside from that minor detail, and a bunch of lifetime experiences, most of the time I feel as young inside my head in 2008 as I did back in 1968.

That's what makes looking at photos of myself such a disconcerting experience. I try to avoid looking in mirrors, but when I want to rekindle a memory of my granddaughter's visit, and I'm in a photo with her, it's tough to avoid seeing the camera-reflected me.

All this is giving me a better understanding of why people, men naturally included, embrace plastic surgery, hair coloring, and other cosmetic improvements on what nature has wrought.

When the inner person is way out of sync with the outer person, some adjustments could be in order.

I doubt I'll go that route, though. One reason is my compassionate Buddha nature. I figure that the older I look, the younger my wife will look when we're together.

Plus, there's the tiger thing. I just read about what some people do in a part of India where man-eating tigers are around.

Since tigers prefer to attack from the rear, they wear masks with a human face on the back of their head. That way, the tiger attacks from the front, thinking it's the person's other end.

Now, it could be argued that if you're going to be jumped by a massive man-eating tiger, it might be better not to know about it until you feel the jaws clamping around your neck. That way the terror time is minimized.

However, like those Indians, I'd rather see the tiger coming, even if I couldn't do much about it.

My gray hair, wrinkles, age spots, and what-not are my tiger. The beast of aging and, eventually, death. I'd prefer that he wasn't stalking me, but he is.

So, I might as well face him head-on. Or at least, out of the corner of my eye.

Comments

[Deb]

I was just talking to my Pops about that very same thing. We were looking at pictures from a recent family wedding and Pops couldn't figure out who that old man in all the pictures was.

When I told him, he decided it was a pretty good thing, after all, that his sight was failing. He said he'd hate to see that old guy in the mirror every morning.

Now he might understand a bit better why we're always telling him he's being too hard on himself and expecting to do too much. After all, he's old! ;>

We were trying to figure out how he could think of himself as still in his 50's when he has several children who are in that age range. Some thngs just don't add up.

But I'm still not sure cameras give a truthful view. I don't know that old fat woman who is standing where I was.

[Rain]

The first time this happened to me, my daughter had just come into womanhood and I looked at a photo of... me... oh wait, that's not me. That's her well. Well then where am I? There I was in the back, that 'older' lady. It was probably in my early 40s and she became the mirror through which I saw my own life changes.

After reading "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle, I began to think more about aging again. Something will tweak me and I do this now and then-- even without a photo to make me go ah ha. His book has an excellent section on the phases of life from the doing years to the being. Inspired by it, I decided to illustrate my own aging through photo sequences which eventually will be a link my blog taking 'me' from 1 to 64. Until I began looking through the photos all together, I didn't realize I was changing all along. The pictures clearly show the differences and even looking at photos of my kids in their 20s and now in their early 40s or late 30s and I can see it in them too. The living of life, especially in an aware state, is an amazing thing.

[Carol Ann]

The more youthful you appears in the picture at the top of your Blog page. I think the shorter hair is what does it?

In any case, being 10 years older than you, I would rather feel better, than look better. Wait until arthritis hits and everything hurts!
And as the old adage says: What doesn't hurt, doesn't work!

[On the Boomer trail (1965)]

Personally I think you look youthful, but prematurely grey (like me!). Your consideration for your wife's comparative youthful appearance was nice, my hubby always looked younger than me although being one year older. How I celebrated when his first grey hairs appeared as 40 approached! I still have more white hair than he, but you can see his... mine keeps disappearing for weeks at a time. ;-}
Love the blog, I'll be one of your million readers from now on.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.