AGING AND THE NATURE
OF TIME
What is aging with respect to the nature of time? Something
we all have in common is that we all age and grow older. So how does that
relate to the nature of time? Why is it that we age at all? Why can’t we stay
young forever? Perhaps, a question that has plagued philosophers for centuries
and why Ponce de Leon set off to find the fountain of youth, the question of
aging has been with us for a long time. So why do we have to age if time stands
still in the universe and is perennial? Let us examine the question
categorically.
Aging is basically the process of growing older and in some
cases more frail and the advancement of age. It is defined in the dictionary as
“the process of becoming old or older.” Essentially, that’s what aging is. It
is a process of becoming old since it wears us down and wears out our youth.
The process of aging requires the passage of time or the winding down of time.
If it said that time is endless and we are immortal beings, why should we age?
Why can’t we simply go to heaven as young hearty men? For one, we become progressively
older- we start as babies, go on to our teens, become adults and finally older people.
This process also requires time and could not be stopped at any one interval.
For example, it would not make sense if we stayed babies forever. Or were perpetual
teenagers or defiant elderly. It seems that aging is inherent to the
nature of time. It is required by time to keep us moving in the direction of
immortality.
Why is that we feel a certain way when we’re young and a
certain way when we’re older. If time is always the same why should our
feelings change? We are more aggressive when we’re younger and when we get
older, we retire. This is likely due to the progressive nature of aging with
respect to time. If time requires us to age, then it will also change our
feelings over time to lead us in that direction. Hence, aging is the process of
immortalization among human beings. But if immortality is a fixed property of
time, then why should we age in the first place? It would almost behoove us to
ask, why be born at all? The answer may lie in the exact concept of the fixed
nature of time.
And what of vanity. When we are younger we feel beautiful
but when we grow older, even a gray hair or slight balding may peeve us. If
time stands still, why is it that vanity fades away. Perhaps, because of the
nature of the soul. To quote the famous poet, “Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.” Thus, it seems that vanity is also a contradiction
to aging. When we look in the mirror, we are only seeing our physical
appearance but the true mirror to the soul is not reflected back to us. Thus,
age is not relative to the soul since the soul is eternal and as the body
withers like the ‘mortal coil’ our soul persists beyond the grave. We must look
deeper.
So if we age, and aging is progressive, why is that it does not
progress beyond our death which is inevitable. Does our life cease to exist
with the culmination of the aging process? Since aging is a fixed property of
time, it would not matter if we age at all and it is only a conditional
property. So even if we age during our earthly years, it would not matter
beyond our death, in that we would stay young forever or at least in a
suspended state of aging. It seems that aging is a relative property and is
immaterial to the nature of time. We age but our soul is the definitive course.
Our soul bears the burden of our aging and hence, we are extended beyond our
years to reach the point of death if only to sanctify our soul for the sake of
aging. In other words, we age to live a thousand times.
It seems that aging is an indirect value of time. We age and
grow old in years if only to pass through a physical transformation and not a
spiritual one. Thus, the two are distinct. Our physical transformation does not
degrade our spiritual one and due to the uniform nature of time, so does aging
not undermine our immortality but extends it. It is one of those mysteries of
God that moves us that while aging is a inevitable process it does not take away
our individuality in any way and only preserves our immortality. So while Ponce
de Leon may have been seeking a real fountain of youth, he would have been
pleased to know that time does justify the existence of such a place where all
things stay young and people never grow older.
