Happiness & Aging: Deng Ming-Dao

If you’ve read this blog for a while you know that I at times fall back to my daily meditation book, 365 Day Tao by Deng Ming-Dao.  A piece from a couple of weeks ago has had me thinking and so I thought I would share his thoughts on aging.  The last line is incredibly powerful, have a happy day my friends.

Lines on the face, tattoos of aging.
Life is proved upon the body
Like needle-jabs from a blind machine. 

The older one gets, the more one is conscious of aging.  We can barely remember childhood innocence and exuberance.  We are surprised by the youthful vitality and unmarked face when we see earlier photos of ourselves.  When we look in the mirror, we reluctantly acknowledge the aging mask.  It seems that there is no escaping the marks of life.

Every experience that we have, everything that we do and think is registered upon us as surely as the steady embroidery of a tattoo artist.  But to a large degree, the pattern and picture that will emerge is up to us.   If we go to a tattoo artist, it is we who select the pictures.  In life, it is we who select what we will become by the actions we perform.  There is no reason to go through life thoughtlessly, to let accident shape us.  This like allowing oneself to be tattooed by a blind man.  How can you help but turn out old and ugly?

Whether we emerge beautiful or ugly is our sole responsibility