The Map of Years

We spend our youth trying to smooth the surface. We want the skin to be tight, the path to be straight, the story to be without interruption. We fear the lines that gather around the eyes and the mouth, seeing them as failures of time. But look closer. The deepest rivers carve the most permanent beds. A face that has weathered the seasons is not a face that has lost its way; it is a face that has finally arrived. There is a specific weight to a life lived in the open, where the sun and the wind have had their say. It is a quiet geography. We are all moving toward this state of being, where the noise of ambition falls away, leaving only the map of where we have been. If you trace the lines, do you see a history of sorrow, or simply the evidence of having been present?

Ryszard Wierzbicki has captured this stillness in his portrait titled A Wise Man. It is a reminder that we carry our entire lives on our skin. What do you see when you look at the map he has left behind?