Embrace the grey

You might read somewhere else in my writings that I am not a fan of fake. Embrace how you look, how you behave and what you like. Don't go with trends unless you choose to. On that note of embrace your grey hair and signs of aging, you have earned the wrinkles and laugh lines.

If you have a mix of original and grey even better. Except when my fiancé cuts my hair the dark comes out and the grey stays, like it has an individual force field around it. In fact due to 2 years hiding behind a covid mask the grey beard is also flourishing nicely. My excuse was that if I lost my job I was ready for a stint as Santa with no artificial face hair needed.

I have had it trimmed to a slightly more tidy then wild jungle look. Luckily my job doesn't require short back and sides, or even being overly tidy as long as we do our jobs properly. In this world the beard is useful to scratch and rub while thinking of an answer to any difficult questions. Possibly making me look like a wise sage with years of useful experience.

In deed it seems to give me a different image in many places. I live in an area with a fair amount of older citizens. A generally affable group , they great fellow members of their elderly clan as they pass. I have somehow joined this group, solely I believe, due to greyness. i now get hellos. smiles and even the odd random conversation.

Even though I am 20 or 30 years younger then most of my new found comrades I have been welcomed. It is quite nice, although my much younger fiancé now looks even more like my daughter then before. not that it bothers either of us too much.

I wonder if I was vain enough to dye my hair and beard , what might happen?

Would the other old folk dismiss my presence, would it end the casual greetings and passing nods? Would I be ostracised for losing my identity? maybe I would need "its ok, I am quite old" put on a badge to reassure people I still fitted in.

The greyness can also have strange effects on the group I belonged too before the grey took hold. I love heavy metal and thrash metal, until long covid too over I loved being in the front. Surrounded by many much younger then me, wondering what I was doing. Looking at an old man mixing with the young people. Could almost read their minds as they were thinking I should be off listening to the radio somewhere safe and quiet.

I don't know if there is an age when I should switch from the young team to the older one. If I had kept dark hair till I was 60 plus for example what then? Equally if I had gone grey in my twenties would this change anything.

In summary there aren't any rules and age isn't relevant, neither is how you look. You are as old as you feel, if you want to act young when your not then carry on. Also act old when you feel like it, better still have a mix. Just because your bones might crack when you stand up you can still like music you did many years before.

Equally if you don't want to follow out young friends for a few gallons of booze every weekend like you used to, don't go.

As the song goes" when it takes all night to do do what you used to do, your the oldest swinger in town"

Embrace the grey.