Jesus, I Hate My Photo - Richard Geib

There are plenty of consolations for aging.

But the physical decay of your body is not one of them.

It is this simple: everytime I see a present day photo of my face, I am unhappy with what I see. And then when I see that same photo five years later, it looks a lot better than what my face looks now. I get older. The photo shows that. It cannot be avoided.

In the larger scheme of things, I don’t care too much about my appearance. With all the responsibilities my life brings in late middle age, worrying about deepening wrinkles or gray hair appears self-indulgent, or worse – unapologetically narcissistic. An outsized concern for the meretricious aspects of your persona is unseemly, in my opinion. I hold that any man who counts calories or weighs himself routinely should have his man card revoked. (I have not stepped onto a scale to weighed myself since the 1980s, outside of a doctor’s office.) A man worth taking seriously paints his hair to appear younger? (I doubt it.) “Vanity, vanity – vanity is all” in our country. There is almost no limit to what Americans will spend on hair dye, anti-wrinkle cream, or a thousand other anti-aging artifices. But I am not contributing money towards any of them myself.

But the years they work on me, as much as anyone else. The ravages of time.

I have been reading a lot of classic Spanish poetry lately, and I came across this poem “A Su Retrato” by Juana Inés de la Cruz. What a wonderful poem! The honesty in that irascible old (link to necios) lady of colonial Mexico. Here it is that poem in the original Spanish:

A SU RETRATO

Este, que ves, engaño colorido,
que del arte ostentando los primores,
con falsos silogismos de colores
es cauteloso engaño del sentido:

éste, en quien la lisonja ha pretendido
excusar de los años los horrores,
y venciendo del tiempo los rigores,
triunfar de la vejez y del olvido,

es un vano artificio del cuidado,
es una flor al viento delicada,
es un resguardo inútil para el hado:

es una necia diligencia errada,
es un afán caduco y, bien mirado,
es cadáver, es polvo, es sombra, es nada.

—Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

In English translation, the poem goes like this:

TO HER PORTRAIT

This coloured counterfeit that thou beholdest,
vainglorious with excellencies of art,
is, in fallacious syllogisms of colour,
nought but a cunning dupery of sense;

this in which flattery has undertaken
to extenuate the hideousness of years,
and, vanquishing the outrages of time,
to triumph o’er oblivion and old age,

is an empty artifice of care,
is a fragile flower in the wind,
is a paltry sanctuary from fate,

is a foolish sorry labour lost,
is conquest doomed to perish and, well taken,
is corpse and dust, shadow and nothingness.

Translation by Samuel Beckett

What do you think of that?

Even more than when I was younger, I crave truth as I get older. I am better able to handle the most inconvenient truths, and seeing things clearly becomes more important. Idiosyncratic or unorthodox conclusions trouble me less than when I was younger. I increasingly have the courage to see what the worst might be, and to embrace it. Worry and doubt recede as a result. “It will be ok.” Do you understand? Here is a photo I have hanging on the wall next to where I lay my head at night to sleep:

“To look things in the face and know them for what they are” in that quotation includes my appearance, and the aging of my body. I will not be in denial about what is happening, nor will I catastrophize what is a normal part of life. What is the truth? Ah, let’s focus in on that.

In a few months I will be 58-years old. I can’t wait to turn 60. Around then I can retire and move on to the next stage of my life. My daughter off to college and me retired after 30+ years on the job. I see friends of mine who are 40-year olds with their bright shiny new families with kids in pre-school and I’m relieved I’m not them. Whew! I already did that and paid the price. Go back? “No, thank you!”

But I am far from done in body and in mind. In two weeks I will likely be re-classified as a NTRP 5.0 tennis player by the USTA. In the gym with certain leg and core nautilus machines, I use all the plates available. I max it out. Did a 60-mail bike race two months ago. I read (link to books) and write as much as I did five or ten years ago.

Nevertheless, I am getting older. I have to manage that decline, as best I can. As always, one has to manage change. (There is a whole sector of business leadership called “change management.”) I am the same as I ever was (Parmenides), different than I ever was (Heraclitus). I attempt to wrap my mind around this. I try to be mindful of exactly what is happening, and what isn’t. It isn’t always easy.

So I hate the photos taken of me today. Here is my official work photo for this academic year:

That photo is a snapshot in time: 2024. But the photos I will see of myself in 2025, 2026, or 2034 will be worse. In comparison, I will look back at this present photo fondly. That is how aging goes.

O, Juana Inés de la Cruz, you curmudgeonly ol’ solterona! Retrato mio mentira. Love it!

Here is my father getting married and off fighting in Vietnam in 1965: