(Pro)Claiming Age

There is more to tell you about Tommi, and I’ll get back to that again in a next post or two, but I must step aside from that line of thinking for a moment to bring your attention to a great post by a fellow celebrant of the beauty and strength to be found in aging. Ronni of “As Time Goes By” has captured in her writing the very sentiment I mean to express in my own as I advocate for the (Pro)clamation of age.

In her candid discussion “The Youth of Age,” she revisits and reassesses sentiments of the 60s and 70s popularly expressing a determined albeit misguided conclusion about getting and being “old.” She comments on the understandable compulsion to chase after “the look” or the claim of youth “in a culture awash with youth worship and ageism” but poignantly reflects a sense of shared embarrassment for the obvious foolishness practiced in an effort to contest the passing of time.

She writes, “We were wrong in the 60s about people over 30. And we are still wrong about them. It is up to us, the older generations, to set it right by refusing the false and foolish cultural imperative to deny our age and to put our collective experience and wisdom to the best possible use.”

Right on, Ronni! These years of the “second half” are the power decades – the gift of age emotionally enriched, deeply beautiful, possessed of wisdom, and wonderfully liberated from dehydrated sensibilities. Other questions can be asked now, beginning with “What’s next?!” And other answers are being given as we learn to shape the aging process through differently composed possibilities. It’s an adventure I plan to ride all the way to the end.

In her New York Times review “Milan Fall Fashion 2005” (see interactive feature), Cathy Horyn deftly critiques the puzzling and surreal offerings from this season's Giorgio Armani collection but adds, as if by way of explanation, “Mr. Armani is a Milan powerhouse. He is close to 70, and at that age, I suppose, you can do whatever you like.” With deep chocolaty voice Ms. Horyn frosts the sentiment deliciously: At this age, “you can do whatever you like.” (Pro)claiming age is the productive act of living into the permissions we’re now old enough to realize. Bring it on!