When my hair started coming in “titanium” okay grey – ish. I started streaking it with platinum blonde to soften the inevitable. My dear friend and makeup guru would lecture me about how I needed to put gold in my hair – “ash” drained my skin of colour.
I was at a cocktail party one evening and a bright and energetic woman with cropped steel grey hair said to me – oh I see you are doing what I did – and gestured to her head.
Hell no! I wasn’t doing that!
I’m not saying she didn’t rock the look, like Jamie Lee Curtis, but it was not a look I was going for. Not yet.
I took myself off to the hairdresser and over the course of several months of experimenting I was a light golden blonde. My makeup softened and my sense of self also softened. That was ten years ago. Why did I do that? Am I in denial? Am I a phony? No. I’m just very susceptible to self-talk. And self-talk often starts with a glance in a mirror.
We go from birth to death physically changing literally from breath to breath. Every time we exhale we are releasing dead cells that have been replaced by new vital cells. We have an incline in vitality until we reach our ‘peak’ and then begin the descent that ends when we lay our head on the pillow for the last time. We leave the husk that is spent and spin our way out of the used up body into the ethers where we began.
I don’t know if you happen to believe that or not, but it doesn’t matter, we will find out when we get there. The point is whether we peak and descend early or later is partly physical but a LOT spiritual.
By spiritual I mean how conscious we allow ourselves to be. Not conscious as in conscious vs unconscious as in knocked out, but conscious as in living in consciousness – the consciousness that is another word for source or creation or God. The stuff we breathe. Not the air, but the energy. Spirit.
You may be wondering what that has to do with being blonde so I will tell you. It has to do with our mind and the stories we tell ourselves. These stories are largely untrue but we believe them because we hear them in our own head and assume we own them. But we don’t. And until we discover that we can alter the stories and experience different outcomes in our life, we are living unconsciously and this means buffeted by external circumstances.
We react to life as if it is happening to us, because it appears that way. As if we have no choice but to deal with what’s occurring. And part of that external happening is our aging body.
When I write the word “aging” it seems commensurate with “old”, but really we began aging the minute we were conceived. When that little fertilised cell festooned into a zygote and then voilá birth, child, teen, adult, oldnic and death. The sun comes ‘up’ (or rather we revolve around it) and the sun goes ‘down’ – the same for every living creature. That is the material reality of life on earth. Tempus fugit. We count time in minutes, hours, days, years.
But there is another reality. Nothing to do with time. The ageless, timeless eternal reality, which we inhale and exhale – one breath from birth to death. The breath we breathe and exchange with every living thing on the planet. We are literally being “breathed” by all creation… from the beginning of creation.
So you still don’t get the blonde connection. Okay… just a minute.
Like a sparkling drop or a tumultuous wave, each is individual of itself, yet it is at the same time the sea in toto – as a whole. So we are energy enrobed in a physical body for a time, and at the same time, we are pure consciousness or energy that is source itself. It is not “in” us so much as our bodies are merely infused with it as is moves through and around us.
This energy or consciousness is ours to “use”. It is us. And we direct it through our thoughts and actions. Thoughts carry energy just as words carry energy. You know the difference in the way you feel when you hear harsh words or words of love. Listen to the difference between “shut up” and “hush”. Emotion is also energy and it infuses our words and actions with daggers or kisses.
If you are thinking I am referring to words you speak out or that are directed at you, I am, but not entirely. The words we speak to ourselves are the ones that form our world from the inside out and that includes illness and aging. Our thoughts and words are made sticky with emotion and every cell in our bodies is listening.
Now, thank goodness, we are not in charge of our own breathing, heartbeat and the trillions of actions that continuously go on in our cells. Imagine forgetting to take a breath like we sometimes forget where we put our keys. However, our energy directed through our thoughts and internal dialogue create the environment in which all these functions thrive. They are either fully supported by all the life promoting chemical signals of happiness – endorphins and such “feel good” hormones or the pollution of the stress hormones like cortisol that surge through our bodies in fear and anger.
Appropriately used, fear is a signal that might be heeded for our survival and anger engenders the force that protects us from negative forces that may harm us. These days in this culture we are inculcated with stressors through media, our jobs and the crazy politics of the globe that have us unsure what each day might hold. Our minds are stuck on the accelerator of these important emotions to the point that they no longer serve, but continue to harm by suffusing our bodies with harmful chemicals and our thoughts with constant anxiety.
These chemicals cause illness. And steal the joy from our life. They make us brittle in our thoughts and in our bodies. They age us.
So when I look in the mirror, I might see my mother who was 89 years old when I last saw her before her death and “see” the inevitable decline to death. Or I can see the evolving soul that I am who is embracing the ageless, timeless choice.
I accept that my body will continue to mature, but I do not accept the inevitability of deterioration by disease and thinning mental capacity for want of stimulation and inspiration, the elixirs of agelessness and timelessness.
I shared in another post, Eyes Don’t Lie About Your Age that when we look into our own eyes we see the spirit who was child, teen, adult. The same sparkle of eternity. This spark is our essence that is expressed throughout our unique lives. The spark never grows old. It may have slipped into obscurity by lack of use, but it is an eternal spark that may be fanned into a flame.
This is aging in the zone.
I am blonde for the same reason that I am careful what I eat, drink high phenolic olive oil every morning (had to get that one in), meditate, do yoga every day and lift weights. I also allocate priority time to creative activities (you know the ones, when engaged, time stops). These commitments keep me inspired and excited about what the Universe has in store for me next.
Life unfolds with exquisite zest. I engage in self-development though workshops and webinars and continue an active business life. I can’t say I am unfazed by life’s inevitable challenges, but I know from experience and reflection that each challenge has made me stronger, more courageous and wiser. And more aware and appreciative about life and the realization that there is a Divine plan or design and purpose that is ever expanding and evolving in me as well as the entire cosmos. Life’s direction is always higher.
I am a work in progress and so are you. Whether you believe that you are on a slow (or speedy) slide to oblivion or like me you believe the best is yet to come is up to you. What is the best you may ask?
Will it be the passionate love, the mansion, the yacht you always thought would be the best? Maybe – as long as you are breathing you are in charge of your own miracles. But maybe the best is peace of mind. A sense that when it is time to die, you are spent. You received the gift of your unique self, unwrapped it and played with it until you learned all its secrets.
Welcome to the zone.
With love,
Marilyn