I.72 — Older

One day the mirror shows someone you do not quite recognize, and the hand closes at once around the face that used to be there.

This is the grip on a younger self, and it is among the most faithful of all grips because it is renewed each morning. It says the real you is back there, and this one is a mistake.

Look at it plainly. The younger self was also rented, and is gone the way any weather is gone. The one in the mirror is the one that is here, and it is the only one that can sit, look, or hold anything. To grip the other is to be absent from your own life in favor of a photograph.

The test is gentle. Look in the mirror once with the name set down — not the age, not the comparison. See what is actually there: a face, tired or not, with a life in it. Then ask whether the clench about it made the face any younger. It did not. It only made the looking harder.

Aging is the lease being read aloud. The practice is to keep living in the house while it is read.