It was on a flight from Las Vegas to San Francisco, a flight I had made countless times over the years, when I had a deja vu moment about aging. As I glanced over to the woman to my right, I suddenly remembered all the times I had watched the older women in my life as a child and felt as far removed from them then as I do now from a 15 year old male skateboarder from Detroit.

On that flight, a surreal feeling swept over me . . . as if I was her or could have been a dear friend of hers in a previous life. The moment was short lived but vibrant and incredibly real, and it made me incessantly aware of aging and this precious thing called human life.

Probably 75 or so, the woman was a petit, short Asian woman with beautiful silver hair, strands of black scattered throughout as the only remnants left of her middle age life. Her skin was glowing despite her obvious fatigue and there was a quiet sauciness, and a knowing smile that suggests a life fully lived. She was wearing faded jeans, classy gold earrings with just a touch of ruby red and a Victorian blue button up top with a crocheted back that barely covered her neck, just enough to add a sweet balance of feminine energy to her other otherwise masculine aura despite her small frame.

Her face was weathered, not terribly so, but like her glow, certainty and smile, her face and hands exuded a lifetime of stories, over decades of experiences, far far beyond Las Vegas or San Francisco.

My deja vu moment came moments after a visit to the airplane loo where I observed my own weathered skin from years of sun exposure including a recent trip in an open convertible where the hot desert sun beat on my skin, adding more aging spots which will someday tell a long story, or a series of them, just like the silver-haired Goddess to my right.

Although I was more than 30 years her junior at the time, I felt as if this woman, whose coiled sleeping body next to me, was a kindred spirit, despite the fact that we had yet to exchange a word.

Part of the desert trip included exploring rock ruins, flora and engravings, the latter of which told some of our ancestor’s stories during a time that not only knew no computer, but knew no pen, paper or even a primitive chalkboard. I couldn’t get enough of the hot Utah sun largely because it had become such a foreign oddity since I had more accustomed to hanging out with words that Google’s Chrome churned out at me tab after tab.

Despite the fact that I had “inked” my face with pure white zinc from Australia, the sun took its toll, not just on my face but on every inch of my body except for the six inches which were covered by scarves and shawls.

In the mirror that afternoon, seeing the weathered results of miles of sun and wind, brought back a memory of my South African host sister and I basking in the African sun as teenagers one hot summer afternoon in Durban. We were coated with baby oil as were our neighbors and their neighbors and so on. My host mother would bring out iced Roibos tea with mint on the hour to make sure we were hydrated and as she did, the door would slam and and their rottweiler would bark. White as snow, she came out glaring through the sun to find us spread out on the grass in her 1950s-style apron with printed pansies in oranges and reds. Truth be told, we spent far too much unprotected time under that blazing ball of fire.

As the memories flooded my head, I looked back at my silver-haired friend, who opened one eye on this occasion, just enough to add a small but tired smile as a way to acknowledge my gaze. At the end of the flight, we exchanged one sentence as we all queued up like cattle waiting our turn to exit the plane.

I felt so connected to this woman I knew nothing about as if we had met before in a far away place, in a previous life, at a time when time had less meaning and aging was revered and respected. When time has no meaning, aging has no meaning. Later, I read an excerpt called Late Ripeness by Czeslaw Milosz that went like this:

One after another my former lives were departing, 

It made me think of her, the woman whose name I never learned, nor whose origin I will ever know. Yet when time has no meaning and aging has no meaning, I understand how things in an aging mind might just be ready to describe things differently than where I stood at the time, in my thirty something year old body. Perhaps the voice would have more gratitude for what and who we are becoming and those we encounter along the way.

We also become more than okay with the silence that blesses us on each new step. As a thirty something year old, I might have equated silence with aging but when you reach that still point, you see it equated with wisdom, a tremendous gift that we can give to others and to ourselves. We live in the present moment when we have this awareness . . . this expanded state of consciousness. Here, we are more open, more vulnerable, more authentic and more pure. As one of my favorite quotes shares: “The whole world surrenders to a quiet mind.”

The truth is that solitude is a gift at every age and the faster we run, the more we spin and less likely we are to see it as a gift. Is aging actually a perception? Can we move beyond that perception and be happy in the now, regardless of what the stats and timeline say on paper? Breathe into that knowing. We are eternal beings and are capable of anything we desire to create in any given lifetime. And the beautiful part is that it’s never too late to create something new, whether it’s a relationship, a new business, a hobby or take on a new skill. What are you waiting for?

This post was originally written on my personal blog in 2008 but reposted here as an evergreen piece.