Aging is a privilege

So count your lucky stars

“Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you should have always been.”

David Bowie said that, and of course he did. He had a hot take on everything - even leaving us with “David’s dead” in his passing, now immortalized as the most iconic TV moment of all time. And that’s coming from someone who watches the Real Housewives.

Bowie aged with grace, or at least that’s how it looked through the screen. But given he didn’t run for office or launch a skincare line, that’s good enough for me.

As someone in her early thirties, there’s only so much I can say about aging, for I am a mere spring chicken. Yet here are people my age talking like it’s all over. Shame on you, media, for convincing us our best years are behind us. I know boomers give it a bad rep, but aging is cool.

The older I get, the more I come to know myself and what (or who) I want out of life. That in itself is a luxury. The luxury of self-discovery. Something many of our parents never had, because there was always someone else to consider. Being “positively selfish” as the influencers say, is a new-age privilege that even now, not everyone gets to experience.

I’m one of the lucky ones, sitting in the comfort of my home, writing this. Not dodging missiles in Gaza or queuing for food in Sudan. You don’t even have to look that far to see poverty now. It’s right here on our doorstep. In the UK, the US, and New Zealand too.

What’s meant to trickle, is barely dripping. And yet it’s not the people struggling who’re complaining. They don’t have the time. It’s the ones with every blessing under the sun that think a smile line is something to frown about.

Bowie left us as the world was shapeshifting into a filtered version of itself. A direction, in part curated by the queen of selfies, Miss Kimberly Kardashian. She’s known to call aging “tragic” while selling us potions that promise to reverse time. She lets us believe that it’s her own products that have come to her rescue, not what her wealth affords her.

Kim built an empire on chasing perfection. Something that doesn’t exist. But here she is, convincing us it does, and Kim, you’re doing amazing sweetie.

She and her 1 percentile posse are the mirror of our moment, the age of bullshit. We’re fed bullshit we don’t need, to buy bullshit we can’t afford, to distract ourselves from the real bullshit that is the system we live under. A system that relies on us acting like flies on bullshit, so they can commit crimes in our name. It’s bullshit.

This system wants us to pay to fix our aging. An otherwise natural and “extraordinary” process we’re designed to do. Instead, we complain about it, while others fight to live.

So next time you spot a wrinkle on your face or a silver hair on your head, take it for what it is. A symbol of your growth in life on Earth, and how cool is that? You used to hate olives and now you love them, because you had another chance to get to know yourself. You gained more time with the people you love. More time to eat olives.

It was only last year that Blake Lively was the internet’s darling and that Brooklyn Beckham was a chef. A simple reminder that a lot can change in a year, so embrace it.
My fiancé has a tattoo which reads “embrace change”, which I always laughed at for obvious reasons, but now the joke’s on me.

So if you're lucky enough to age, enjoy it! Eat your words. Chew the fat. Loudly. Softly. Gratefully. But don’t complain about it. That’s a waste of precious time.