Choosing My Religion

We are born, we bud, blossom, wilt, grow old, and die. We all know this, and we all forget it. Constantly we are reminded.

A few months ago I saw a photo of myself, and for the first time I can remember, I really disliked what I saw. My hairline has receded a lot in the last few years, and I now saw it was thinning at the temples. I could see through my hair to my scalp. I had never been able to do that before. My face looked thin and pale. My eyes were tired, sunken into little violet bags. I looked brittle, frail, sickly, and old.

I knew it would happen eventually. The evidence is all around me. But for some reason, I believed I would not grow old, or at least I was unwilling to accept it. I put so much stock in my looks. They gave me so much joy in my youth. For a few years, I was good-looking. I remember the thrill of women noticing me, the electric delight of playing with my attraction to women and their attraction to me, of flirting, hunger, seeing and being seen.

But it was never going to last. At a certain point, such joys dry out and become stale. They are beautiful while they are natural, but a little repulsive if they continue too long. Life drives us to deeper things. With one hand, she entices us; with the other hand she pushes. The things we hold on to turn foul and sicken us. We vomit our attachments up.

David Foster Wallace said that everyone worships something: our only choice is in what we worship. He said that if we worship something limited, then we only tighten those limitations around us: we feel the walls close in. If we worship money we feel poor. If we worship power we feel weak. If we worship our intellect we dread being seen as dumb. If we worship our sexual allure we always feel ugly, “and when time and age start showing we die a million deaths before they ever plant us.”

We see this everywhere. Middle-aged women get plastic surgery and botox, go on diets, exercise, wear make-up and skin creams, get their hair done and their teeth whitened, have stylists and manicurists and personal trainers – they do a thousand things, but still each day they get older. They will never, ever be as beautiful as they were when they were twenty-three. But they refuse to give up their looks. They invest their self-worth in a failing commodity. They clutch hold of their beauty, hold it tighter and tighter as it shrinks and withers, until it turns to powder in their hands, and they are left clenching fists around nothing.

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And it’s not just women. Every year, more men get hair transplants, tummy tucks, dermal injections, jaw augmentations, rhinoplasties and cheek fillers than ever before. Steroid use among young men has risen fourfold each of the last three years. In 2015 in the USA, more than 1.2 million cosmetic procedures were performed on men, up 325% from 1997. 15% of all plastic surgery is now performed on men. In Korea the number is 25%. As technology improves, plastic surgery works better. Studies at Georgetown show that people find men more attractive, trustworthy, and likeable after those men have undergone facial surgery. The statistics indicate overwhelmingly that cosmetic surgery makes a person look more beautiful; I would argue it makes them feel more ugly.

I am no expert on the psychology of ageing, but I have seen some people grow old in my life. It happens in one of two ways: either a person becomes more afraid as they grow older, more closed-off, isolated, stubborn, constricted and unfree; or they become gentler, kinder, looser, more at peace-– in a word, wiser. Their bodies crumble but their souls soar. They let go of the world and take on the qualities of the sky. That seems to be the crux of it: a wise person recognizes that everything will be snatched away one day, so they learn to give it up; an unwise person clings tight. This dichotomy is present in everyone, but age makes it more pronounced.

I suspect that ageing is just a manifold repetition of the same decision: will I let go, or will I cling fast? We make that decision a million times, and it doesn’t begin when we’re sixty-– it begins when we’re twenty-three and find we have to let go of our youth. One after another, we let go of our dreams. With each decision we make we let go of a dozen possibilities. Then we fall in love and let go of our independence. We have children and let go of our spare time. Our children grow up and we let go of our control over them. Again and again, we choose whether to let go or hold on. But it’s not really a decision-– everything is taken from us, whether we like it or not. Our decision is whether we let go graciously, or dig our nails in and compel life to tear its gifts from our bloody hands.

Today I am confronted with such a decision. I feel anxious about the loss of my looks. I can satisfy that anxiety, by starting a hair loss treatment or skincare regime, or I can let that anxiety go. I sense that satisfying anxiety only nurtures it: it comes back again and again, and constantly demands a greater and greater sacrifice. Hair loss serum today; hair transplant tomorrow; hormonal treatment the day after. Skin cream today; botox tomorrow; cosmetic surgery the day after. I will become the puppet of my own anxiety, and it feels empty. The beauty that you can produce with lasers and creams is imaginary and superficial: imaginary because it consists in what I think other people think of me; superficial because it stretches no deeper than skin and maybe bones. It has no soul.

But there is a deeper beauty. There is a beauty that can be felt, not just thought. It is the beauty of kindness, love, selflessness, wisdom, peace. Today I choose that beauty. I let go of my looks, though it scares me because they have been my greatest joy, but I trust that there is greater joy in not worrying about how other people see me. I let go of my dreams, though they have comforted me; I trust there is deeper solace in caring for other people. I let go of my pride, though it has fortified me; I trust there is greater security in humility. Today I choose my religion. We all do, every day until we die.