The Light Behind the Aging Face

The mirror shows a face you do not recognize this morning. The hands feel heavier, the steps slower, as if the body you have lived in all your life has quietly become a stranger while you slept.

You mourn the version of yourself that moved without pain, the skin that did not sag, the energy that did not fade by noon. But the light does not reside in the vessel that breaks; it resides in the one who sees.

You came from the light, and you are returning to it, regardless of what the glass tells you. The body is merely the house where the light lives for a season, not the light itself.

When the house creaks and the windows cloud, the fire inside burns just as bright. You are not the aging frame you see; you are the ancient, unchanging glow looking out through it.