Please join me in celebrating my Grandma Rose’s birthday! She’s the most wonderful, joyful Grandma in the whole wide world, and maker of some pretty dang perfect mashed potatoes and the best grilled cheese sandwiches that I’ve ever had. Here’s a tidbit from a book titled How to Secure a Beautiful Complexion and Beautiful Eyes, published in the year of Grandma’s birth. It seems quite fitting, considering that she doesn’t look a day over seventy.
1911: To Retain Youthful Looks
Countless fortunes have been spent in searching for the Fountain of Youth, but never will this fountain be found until the searcher looks within. The secret lies there, open to the gaze of him who knows how to search, but, like all of nature’s secrets, it can not be purchased with money.
Birth is usually regarded as the beginning of life, and death as its end, but this is a mistaken view. The process of life is going on continuously; every second, every minute, every hour of the day we are casting off old material with every exhalation, and drawing in new material with every inhalation; it is a perpetual ‘beginning and ending during the whole of life. Every draught of water swallowed, every particle of food eaten, helps to keep this process of change in constant operation. Our hair, flesh, teeth, bones and every part of our bodies is practically renewed every few months, but so gently and so subtly does this change take place that we never become aware of it.’ . . .
When your birthday comes around do not sign over the fact that you are a year older; think rather with pleasure of all that has been accomplished during the year past and make plans for the year coming.
The thought that your body is a year older than last birthday is not correct; it is rather like a river, the waters of which rush rapidly onward and will never be seen again, yet the river remains, its waters continue to flow; they are constantly new waters, but the river is the same, rushing towards the sea with the same vigor, though centuries pass away.
Nature will attend to the changes with little help on your part, but you are the architect and must furnish the material. Every one can be master of his own body and has it within his power to make whatsoever alterations he desires. Mind does control matter and wisdom comes with years.
Source: Clarke, James J. How to Secure a Beautiful Complexion and Beautiful Eyes. Chicago: Advanced Thought Publishing, 1911.
~ pp. 92-93 ~