Question 3: When you look at an elderly person’s hands what do you see?

I see a lot of wrinkles. Wrinkles are the ridges and valleys of the human body, tested by its long stay, like the mountains and vast ridges in the earth. Elderly people are a physical metaphor of the living. Their skin on their hands is a sign of how age can diminish physical beauty, but that same skin retains the elegance of a person still whole, still alive to show what it means to be old, what it means to stay here on this plane of existence. Without their hands, and the person attached to them, there would be no concept of what it is to have succeeded.

But… I realize that elderly people are not as appreciated as they should be. Their hands, while showing the artistic revelation of age, also reveal how our youth disappears, and is replaced with aging replicas of our baby-faces. Natural collagen in our bodies diminishes, and we crinkle up like an apple without water, like flower that has gone to seed. In some sense it reminds us of what it means to be on the verge of death, and that itself is an experience we like to avoid thinking about. In another sense it reminds us that there is no longer a use for us. Once we’re old enough to become testaments to a long healthy life, we become stigmas and are pushed to the outsides of modern reality in its attempt to forestall the eventuality of death with plastic surgery and expensive body cremes.

The truth is that it is not hard to become old anymore. To truly embrace becoming old… or rather, obsolete… is hard.

- Anya

All graphics © BY-NC 4.0

Tomorrow's Question: Which disease known to humankind do you hate the most? Explain why. Journal Prompts © Pyxlin