However old you may be, you’re young. Try to focus on the world outside of yourself; give of yourself to the people you meet and the things of beauty that surround you, and pretty soon you WILL be beautiful. It will shine right through you. Look away from the mirror and walk out in the sun, and you will see.

Believe in the power of who you are and you’ll find the child within you – who IS you – will never grow old.

I’m not 30 yet, but I’m getting pretty darn close. I’m not wild about the inevitability of ageing, either.

I don’t have the complete answer – sometimes I really HATE getting old – but what helps me sometimes is listing the things I have gained because of my inevitable ageing:

Intellectual learning.
Spiritual learning. Things that I used to just talk about, I now understand from the inside out.
Self-confidence (more of it, anyway).
Self-protection. Nice to know I'm not likely to make those painful or dangerous mistakes again! (I'll just make new ones...)

Etc.

I think the reason we’re afraid of ageing (aside from the fear of death) is that age is not respected in our culture the way it used to be. Old people seem to be viewed as helpless, or just irrelevant. It has helped me too to read about how older people are revered in other countries, and to read about what older folks can contribute that young ones can’t. Age = wisdom, or at least it can, if you pay attention to it. Gives me something to look forward to.

As you may know, many people feel the same way as you. People want to be able to look young, feel young, etc. The messages we get from society (including commercial advertisements) don’t help either.

I think if you focus on staying healthy (eating healthy, exercising, challenging yourself mentally, taking care of your skin, playing a lot of golf!), then you’ll be able to age gracefully. Looking on the “bright” side, when you are 50, I’m sure there will be people who think you are in the mid-30s.

You should also start focusing on your inner beauty, too. I mean, what is really important is what kind of person is inside of you. 20-30 years from now, you still want to be able to be happy what you see when you look in the mirror. If you realize the beauty that is inside of you, you’ll be able to look beyond the external stuff and appreciate what you see.

I think my aging issues were the worst in my thirties. It got a lot better when got past 40. And from what I hear, it gets much better at 50. We’re only here such a short time, and the real stuff happens after we check out of this “veil of tears”. Don’t know if that helps. If I could do it over, I would have appreciated my 30’s more, and taken better care of my body (it makes a difference!), and not listen so much to all the propaganda, it hits us all.

I’m 38. Now for a while I did say I was a coupla years younger…but not because of fear of aging exactly…I worked in advertising for 2 years and I felt like those years were so crappy I wanted them back! :D

But I’ve had so much fun lately that I’ve made up for the bad years, so I’m 38 again :o)

It’s very hard for me to understand feeling old at 32? But I certainly wish you well. Good luck.