Who Do You See In The Mirror

Who do you see when you look into the mirror?

In the mirror of my mind (or perhaps even in the physical looking glass), I see a young adult, perhaps 28 or so, with a full head of dark hair. I do not see the grey bits showing intermittently depending on how I part my hair. I do not see the 3 creases on my forehead. I do not see the slight lines that have started developing around my eyes.

But today a headline catches my eye "Golden Girl Beatrice Arthur, dead at 86". I stop to think a little - is that the little old lady who was the mother of that manly woman or was that the manly woman character, Dorothy herself? The article confirms it was Dorothy, the towering, strapping woman with that dry, sarcastic sense of humour which I had particularly enjoyed, with her deadpan expressions as she delivered her lines. I was more shocked that she was 86 than she was dead. How could she be 86?

I loved the "Golden Girls", a sitcom about retirees, not the usual sitcoms surrounding a bevy of beautiful, young people. Instead it was about 4 ladies in the autumn of their lives, still looking healthy, attractive in an elderly person's way I suppose, still having their wits about them, charming us with their sense of humour. The show aired from 1985 to 1992 and I was a teenager at that time and Dorothy/Beatrice Arthur was what, 60 plus at that time? Fast forward 20 plus years. I am going to reach a milestone birthday this June, the ones with a zero, so is it any wonder that she would be 86?

I guess how we think of ourselves clouds our perception of things around us. It is time-warping to say the least. I do not feel 40. I do not see myself as 40. But I guess biologically, I will soon be. But for me, life will still go on the same way, pretty much I guess. I don't think it's going to start changing anything for me. I am too comfortable in my own skin to start conforming to what the world's notion of a 40 year-old should be. And after all, I'm too old to start...