Finding “the answer” is an endless search. Have you noticed how through the decades we have searched for “the answer” to defeat aging? No, ladies, I am not picking on you. We men are just as vain about addressing baldness or eliminating love handles and stomach flab. The desire for youthful facial looks is just a convenient illustration.
When people are genuinely concerned about survival needs, they are less concerned about physical appearance. Affluence often expresses itself in “looking younger than I am.” Each decade discovers “the answer.” “This cream or this foundation eliminates fine lines.” “This technology takes years off your face.” “This surgery defies age!” After all, “you deserve this.”
There is always “the answer.” The problem is that “the answer” always changes. I can remember when the answer was penicillin, or D.D.T., or the polio vaccine, or pre-merge chemicals, or selective weed-killers, or radiation, or etc. Unfortunately, (a) “the answer” has unanticipated consequences, or (b) “the answer” is not as effective as was hoped, or (c) “the answer” is too expensive to address the need. Then there is the problem of new needs and new villains.
We still die (no matter how young we look), we still get sick (no matter what we eat), and we feel miserable (no matter what we accumulate). Our answer is never “the answer.” Just today I heard the population explosion is not the result of people living longer, but the result of children living to adulthood.
Could it be “the answer” is not what we find, but what we are? Could it be what is beyond death not what is before death?
Link to other Writings of David Chadwell