👵 Vanity and Ageing: Why Some People Fight Time and Others Make Peace With It #elderescence #aging

 

Vanity and Ageing: Why Some People Fight Time and Others Make Peace With It

Welcome to Elderescence Academy — reflections on growing older with curiosity, creativity, and calm.

Ageing is one of the few experiences that every human being shares, yet the ways people respond to it vary enormously.

Some individuals meet the passing of time with determination. They exercise discipline over their appearance, invest in skincare, hair treatments, aesthetic procedures, and sometimes surgery. They aim to preserve a version of themselves that feels familiar — a face, a body, an image that reflects the vitality they still feel within.

Others take a very different path. They allow the changes of time to appear openly. Hair turns grey, skin softens, lines deepen, and the body shifts its shape and rhythm. They may care for themselves well, but they do not attempt to resist the visible signs of age.

These two responses are often presented as opposites — as if one represents vanity and the other represents acceptance.

In reality, the motivations behind them are far more complex.

Human beings have always been attentive to appearance. Long before modern cosmetics and surgery existed, people used dyes, clothing, jewellery, hairstyles, and rituals of grooming to shape how they were seen. Appearance has always carried social meaning.

It signals health, status, identity, creativity, belonging.

In many ways, caring about how one looks is simply part of being human.

What changes with age is not the instinct itself, but the context surrounding it.

Modern societies place a great deal of symbolic value on youth. Youth is associated with possibility, beauty, fertility, productivity, novelty. Entire industries have grown around preserving the outward signs of youth for as long as possible.

Against this background, it is understandable that some people choose to intervene in the ageing process. Cosmetic procedures, dermatology, dentistry, and aesthetic medicine offer tools that previous generations never had access to.

For some individuals, these tools provide confidence. They help a person feel that their outward appearance still reflects their inner energy. Others enjoy the artistry involved in shaping their image. In these cases, aesthetic intervention can feel like an extension of personal expression.

At the same time, there are people who feel little desire to resist visible ageing. They may see wrinkles or grey hair not as problems to solve but as markers of experience. Each change tells a story of time lived.

This perspective often grows alongside a broader shift in priorities. As people accumulate years of experience, attention sometimes moves away from appearance and toward other aspects of life: relationships, creativity, knowledge, or simply peace of mind.

The mirror becomes less central.

Neither approach is necessarily more authentic than the other.

In fact, the boundary between them is often fluid. A person might dye their hair but feel comfortable with wrinkles. Another might avoid cosmetic procedures but enjoy beautiful clothing or jewellery. Many people move between these attitudes at different stages of life.

What makes the subject particularly interesting is the role that identity plays.

For some individuals, appearance has been closely tied to their sense of self for many years. Actors, performers, public figures, and people whose work relies on visual presentation may feel that maintaining a particular image is part of their professional identity. Changing that image can feel like changing a role that they have inhabited for decades.

Others never experienced appearance as a central part of their identity. Their sense of self may be rooted more strongly in intellectual, creative, or relational qualities. For them, visible ageing feels less consequential.

There is also the psychological dimension of familiarity.

Human beings tend to prefer continuity. We become accustomed to our reflection over time, and sudden changes can feel disorienting. For some people, aesthetic interventions help maintain a sense of continuity with the person they recognise in the mirror.

For others, adaptation comes more easily. They simply adjust their mental image of themselves as time progresses.

Cultural background also plays a role. Different societies interpret ageing in different ways. In some cultures, visible age is associated with wisdom, authority, and dignity. In others, youth is strongly prioritised as a symbol of vitality and relevance.

These cultural signals inevitably influence individual choices.

Yet perhaps the most interesting shift occurs internally.

As people move further into adulthood, many discover that the emotional weight they once attached to appearance begins to change. The attention that was once directed toward external evaluation gradually moves inward.

Instead of asking, “How do I look to others?” the question becomes, “How do I feel within my own life?”

For some, aesthetic care remains an enjoyable form of self-expression. For others, the energy once spent managing appearance becomes available for different pursuits — art, travel, learning, friendships, reflection.

Both choices can coexist peacefully.

What matters most is that the choice belongs to the individual rather than to social pressure. Ageing is not a competition with a single correct strategy. It is a personal process that unfolds differently for every person.

Some will sculpt their appearance carefully for many decades.

Others will allow time to mark their features openly.

Both approaches reflect the same underlying freedom: the ability to decide how one wishes to inhabit the passing years.

And perhaps that freedom is one of the quieter privileges of ageing itself.

The older we become, the less we need to follow a single script for how life should look.

Instead, we gain the space to decide for ourselves.

Thank you for listening to Elderescence Academy.

Until next time, stay curious.

Pleasure in Later Years: Sensuality, Desire, and the Art of Elderescence Ch 2 #elderescenceacademy

 In this chapter of Elderescence, Sarnia de la Maré explores how sensation changes after midlife — including increased sensitivity to texture, sound, temperature, and pace. The essay reframes ageing not as sensory decline, but as refinement, arguing that subtle pleasures become more meaningful as the body becomes a finer, more attentive instrument.

Topics include ageing and the nervous system, sensory sensitivity, pleasure after midlife, embodied intelligence, and rethinking the ageing body in contemporary health culture.

A full transcript of the essay is available for listeners who prefer to read alongside the audio.

Chapter 2

The Sensory Body After Midlife

There is a persistent myth about ageing that insists the senses dull with time. That touch becomes blunted, sound fades, pleasure weakens, and the body gradually withdraws from the world of sensation.

Yet for many people, the opposite is true.

What changes after midlife is not the ability to feel, but the nature of feeling itself. Sensation does not disappear; it refines. The body becomes less tolerant of excess and more attuned to nuance. What is often described as decline is, in practice, a form of discernment.

In youth, the body absorbs sensation with relative ease. Noise, speed, texture, and intensity are tolerated, even sought after. The nervous system is resilient to overload, and stimulation is often equated with vitality. Loud music, crowded spaces, abrasive fabrics, hurried movement — these are endured, sometimes enjoyed, often unquestioned.

As the years pass, the body begins to edit.

Many people notice an increased sensitivity to texture, sound, temperature, and pace. Certain fabrics feel intrusive rather than neutral. Layered noise becomes exhausting. Extremes of heat or cold are more sharply registered. Rushed movement and conversation feel abrasive rather than energising.

These changes are frequently framed as loss. As signs of fragility. As evidence that the body is becoming less capable of engaging with life.

But sensitivity is not the same as weakness.

Sensitivity is information.

A body that registers more detail is not malfunctioning. It is paying closer attention. The nervous system, shaped by years of lived experience, becomes less interested in extremes and more responsive to fine distinctions — small shifts in pressure, subtle changes in temperature, the difference between tension and ease.

This refinement alters the landscape of pleasure.

After midlife, pleasure often becomes quieter but deeper. It no longer relies on spectacle or intensity. Subtle experiences — the feel of well-made fabric, the exact warmth of water, the cadence of breath during movement, the tone of a voice rather than its volume — take on greater significance.

These are not indulgences. They are calibrations.

The body is no longer chasing sensation. It is receiving it.

This is why subtle pleasures often become more meaningful with age. A single stretch may feel more nourishing than an intense workout. One piece of music may resonate more fully than an entire playlist. Stillness may offer more satisfaction than constant stimulation.

This is not boredom, nor withdrawal from life. It is resolution.

The ageing body is often described as worn — an instrument losing its reliability, its responsiveness, its strength. But many bodies after midlife behave less like damaged instruments and more like finely adjusted ones. They respond best to precision rather than force, to care rather than intensity.

A violin is not weaker than a drum. It simply requires a different touch.

So does the sensory body after midlife.

Elderescence does not deny that the body changes. It asks instead what kind of change is actually occurring. A body that requests slower pace, better materials, clearer sound, and more thoughtful movement is not asking for less life. It is asking for better signal.

The sensory body after midlife is not fading.
It is tuning itself — so that pleasure, when it arrives, arrives clearly.