The Map of Our Years

Dear traveler, I have been thinking about the way we try to hide our history. We treat our skin like a secret, smoothing it over, pretending that the sun and the wind and the long, hard winters haven’t left their marks. But look at how a tree holds its rings, or how a riverbed remembers the force of the water that carved it. There is a quiet, terrifying beauty in being worn down by life. It is not a loss; it is a collection. Every line on a face is a road map of a place we have been, a conversation we survived, or a grief we finally learned to carry without breaking. We spend so much of our youth trying to be blank slates, not realizing that the most interesting people are the ones who have allowed the world to write its stories all over them. If you could see the map of your own life, would you be brave enough to trace the deepest lines with your fingers?

Ryszard Wierzbicki has taken this beautiful image titled A Wise Man. It reminds me that we are all just stories waiting to be read by someone patient enough to look. Does this face tell you a story you recognize?