One of the most unfair things about aging is that it does not happen on the inside. Not slowly, not gradually, but not at all. Inside, you are the same person you have always been. With the same reactions, the same way of thinking, the same curiosity. The body ages. We do not.

 

We rarely talk about this contradiction. It is uncomfortable. There are no good words for it. There is no pathos in it, and there is no solution.

 

Inside, there is no age. No calendar. No statistics. No wrinkles. A person is not fifty, not sixty, not seventy on the inside. Inside, you are more or less where time once stopped. This is why a strange situation occurs: when you look at people from your own age group, you may not be disturbed by what you see, but you cannot imagine yourself next to them as a possible partner either. Not because they are bad people. Not because they are not decent, interesting, or kind. But because inside, you are not there.

 

This is not about desire. Not about sexuality. Not about attraction. This is about identity. If on the inside you do not live at the age your appearance shows, then someone of a similar external age feels foreign. As if you were not part of the same story. As if time moved at a different rhythm for them.

 

It is completely different when you grow old together with someone. There is no rupture then. The inside and the outside change together. The mirror does not bother you. It is no longer a question what you see when you look at the other person. Because you are not seeing a body, but time lived together. A shared wearing down that is not alien, but connective. In that case, aging is not something strange, but a natural part of being together.

 

The problem arises when this shared aging does not exist. When inside you remain the same, but outside you change. When you catch your reflection in a shop window or an elevator mirror and are thrown off balance for a moment. Not because you are ugly. But because you are not seeing the person you feel yourself to be on the inside.

 

This moment often leads to shame. Not moral shame, but existential shame. The feeling that your body is further along than you think you are. That your appearance betrays your inner self. That the world assumes you are already somewhere you have not reached.

 

We rarely speak about this. Instead of addressing it, we reach for explanatory phrases: age is just a number, you look young, the soul does not age. These only blur the essence. Nice sentences designed to avoid saying the truth: the body and identity have slipped out of alignment.

 

This is not a tragedy. Not a drama. Not a complaint. It is a condition. One that everyone experiences, but few are willing to face honestly. It is not that aging hurts. What hurts is that we do not age the same way our bodies do.

 

Aging does not happen on the inside. It happens on the outside. And this injustice cannot be fixed. There is nothing to defeat and nothing to beautify. It is enough to be aware of it. The human body and soul are not made of the same material.

 

You can live with this. For example, by choosing carefully what, and who, you allow yourself to look at.