Ageless

Maybe it's about more than GenX looking young

I survived being bullied in the 80’s by reading books. 

(I know there are more of you out there.) 

I read to escape. But in the 80’s, there were never enough books that had places I actually wanted to live. Plenty of philosophically important dystopias and weighty sci-fi, but these were not valuable to 12-to-16-year-old me, who ‘didn’t belong’.

Astrid Lindgren’s Ronia and Frances Hodgeson Burnett’s A Little Princess were favourites, and I loved folk and fairytales, but I was getting older. 

Then one marvellous day, the meagre stash of fantasy relegated to a single shelf away from the respectable books in my small-town library, was graced with a novel called ‘A Walk Out of the World’, by Ruth Nichols.

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A brother and sister (who, not belonging in their concrete school, are bullied) walk into the woods one night and notice the stars have changed. They find they’re in a different world, and suddenly surrounded by patrolling warriors who treat them as enemies until the girl’s silvery hair is uncovered. The aggressors become reverent, leading them back to the lakeside family stronghold, and they are granted audience with the seldom-seen Grandmother.

I don’t remember her name or title. It’s honestly about thirty years since I’ve seen this book (I’ll have to Google the author before I post this). But the Grandmother left a mark on me.

She did not look like a grandmother. Her hair was like the girl’s. Her eyes intelligent and wise—their depth the sole indicator of her great age—her body still strong. She was not the leader, but a mystic matriarch honoured by the clan. She was described as neither old nor young-seeming, but ‘ageless’.

Ageless.

I found the word magical. 

It lodged in my heart. To me it did not mean ‘eternal beauty’, though she was beautiful, but ‘transcendent’. 

And as one who did not belong, transcendence is what I needed. To rise above. To be unaffected by the debilitating blows of sharpened words that could assail me from any direction, at any time.

To be here, but experience the world from a different level.

Surviving adolescence, I carried this concept of ‘Ageless’ with me til I encountered the Grandmother again in a different story, found at my fiance’s house, when I was 19. This time it was George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin. The princess’s very great Grandmother was another beautiful, ageless, being who transcended time and space—rarely seen, but bringing wisdom and aide when least expected. 

Another role model to aspire to.

And I truly did. Still lodged in my heart, ‘Ageless’ influenced my mystic meanderings through the challenge of raising three children on a low income while I had health issues and undiagnosed ADHD. There must be a way to transcend, I thought, to access what those Grandmothers knew and be beautiful and wise in the midst of it! Various practices and insights helped me find wonder in the everyday, and overcome the hopelessness engendered by sub-standard living situations, at least some of the time. What I learned helped my children, too. 

I’ve noticed discussions popping up of late about the ‘ageless’ appearance of GenX. The term is even applied to me sometimes. At 51, I get mistaken for a sibling, rather than the mother, of my adult kids. (If you were wondering, in my case it’s from good genes and tons of Mercury energy). It can be fun in the moment, but it’s mostly frustrating to not be taken seriously because people think you’re younger. This is not the agelessness I long for.

My wish is for GenX (myself included) to grow into Grandmothers, in that transcendently beautiful way. What if we rise above the choking materialism and polarity we have perpetuated? What if we look beyond the current narrative and offer higher ways and wisdom to the world?

What if, as a generation, we embodied those possibilities…right where we are?

‘Ageless’.

It might just be what we’re here for. It might just change the world.