Embracing change

There is only one thing constant in life — change. No matter what you do things will change for you. One day you will wake up, splash water on your face. You look in the mirror and see the face of a stranger. Who is that? You wonder. Then rudely you realize that old lady with deep, ugly circles under her eyes, heavy lines around her mouth is you. You have grown old. Your face — and consequently the rest of you — has changed.

For the first time you realize that once when you were young you were very pretty but all that is gone now. Now you are quite old. Where did that lovely young woman go? You wonder, Is there anything I can do to slow this down? I know I take enough natural vitamins but maybe I can improve my cosmetic care. 

So I go to the mall, to the store that sells Japanese cosmetics. Once in my 20s I used their skincare, I wonder how much their anti-aging potions now cost. “P39,000,” the nice girl with a lot of makeup on says. Omigod, that is just too expensive, I tell her, as a dark, dumpy, rather unattractive person walks out of a consultation room. She is younger than I and maybe much richer, too. No, this is too expensive for me. No matter how old or rich I’m getting, I am not spending P39,000 a month on my face.

Then I stop to contemplate this. Is it really an amount I cannot afford? It is an amount I definitely don’t want to spend on my face. So I go around the other stores, finally stray into The Face Shop, a Korean cosmetic store, and finally decide to try their anti-aging line, which costs less than a fourth of what the Japanese brand would have cost. And really, if all these brands just spent less on packaging and promotions it would cost much less. 

Then I ask myself how much the brands themselves have changed. Once upon a time it was the era of European cosmetics: Guerlain, Dior, Chanel. That was in the ’50s and the years before. Then it became the era of American cosmetics: Revlon, Max Factor, Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder, with the introduction of a new Japanese brand called Kiss Me, which was cheap, so all of us in high school then tried it. 

Now there is a proliferation of new brands but for some strange reason I have been drawn to the Asian brands. Why? Because I’m Asian and I have this theory that Asian skin is different from Caucasian skin. But strangely I haven’t been that drawn to the Filipino brand. Maybe when I finish my Korean cosmetics I will try the Filipino brand. Maybe that will work best on my skin.

I have grown old — that’s change — but I have also grown more adventurous. I realize I have come to love change. I ran into a group of old mothers. Are you still mothering? I asked. No, nobody listens to me, one of them said, while the others nodded vigorously. Right, I said, that’s why we have to find our own new lives. These days I make costume jewelry. It was not until my cousin offered me a job, which I took without thinking. Now I am learning how to make costume jewelry and am trying to find a place to sell them so my life is full even if my children are all over 40 and don’t need me anymore. There is still a lot of life left over after retirement.

Life, whether we like it or not, will always bring with it major changes. Some of the changes are sorrowful — the death of someone we love, the loss of property we inherited. We have to learn first to accept that we cannot do much to get them back. We have to give ourselves time to adjust then we have to teach ourselves to open our minds and our senses to possibilities that exist outside of everything else we have been doing. 

We can experiment with cosmetics. We can pursue our hobbies even if they are solitaire or mahjongg. We can take lessons in playing an instrument or learning to sing. Everybody has talent just waiting to be discovered. That’s what change is for, that’s why it happens when we least expect it. Change is sent to us so we can discover a part of ourselves we did not know before. That’s the wonderful thing about change.

So as hard as it may seem, let us welcome change with open arms. It will definitely make all of us grow wiser and happier. It will compensate us for the wrinkles.

* * *

Please text comments to 0917-815-5570.