I was in a department store a while back, flipping through the winter coats and getting bored and overheated when I caught my reflection in the mirror at the end of the aisle. It stopped me for a moment, and as I stood there staring at myself, turning my head from side to side and recognizing the genes of my mother's family: the thinning hair and the salty beard, the tilted ears and the pointed nose, my grandfather's crow's feet, it dawned on me, "Mom's right. The older I get, the more I do look like them."

For a moment, I felt old. I looked old.

I suspect this is common for a lot of us, being snapped out of whatever we're up to by the reality of age and time. We see ourselves in the mirror or wake up stiff or have more wrinkles than we'd like. We don't get around like we used to and one day an afternoon nap isn't a want but a need. I also suspect that the older we get, the more often we notice this. I certainly don't recall contemplating my own mortality much while agonizing over my Halloween costume or what to have for breakfast before Saturday morning cartoons when I was a kid. The world was small then, and time was abstract.

Aging takes that from us. The world gets bigger and time becomes real. Then suddenly time becomes fleeting. The body weakens and begins disobeying us, behaving in ways no parent would agreeably tolerate. We age. This is a universal and inevitable part of life.

Now, we can know this as a certainty, but that does not exempt us from the complex mixture of emotions that comes with it. The ride goes up and down. We can recognize and be grateful for the wisdom we've earned but still mourn the diminishing amount of time we have left to use and share it. We may feel anxious about our physical decline but be thankful for the opportunity to rest. We see our changing social roles but do not envy those still burdened by the pressures of youth. We feel the uncertainty of how our loved ones will get on after we go. It's a mixed bag and its contents can get heavy. It's easy to get weighed down.

But the bag can be lightened. We can learn to carry it easier, not by emptying it, but by changing our relationship to it. We can't alter the reality we're getting older. But we can transform how we relate to it and so come to a deeper sense of peace with it all - not by denying it or ignoring it or wishing to find a way to change it, but by simply accepting it.

So how do we accept something we don't like?

We do this in meditation through the practice of acceptance. We anchor the mind in the present moment - often by focusing on the breath - and we observe what arises into our experience. Then, we let go of any judgement toward it, good or bad: our thoughts, our emotions, any arising physical sensations, noises, smells and visions. We don't react. We simply let it all come and go. In this way, over time, we learn how to let things be, just as they are.

In instructional terms, acceptance is really the practice of removal. We remove preference and bias. We remove craving (wanting) and aversion (rejection). We remove judgement and opinion and reaction. We remove liking and disliking. We stop yearning for enjoyable situations to continue and we stop rejecting unfortunate ones which we fear will. We let things be as they are, knowing in our core that everything has the nature to change, that it too shall pass. And we become okay with it. In this way we can find deeper peace in what is, rather than seeking it in the isn't we want but can't have.

In practice, it looks like this: let's say we've been sitting in meditation now for a few minutes, anchored on the breath, when one of our knees starts to get stiff. Our first instinct is to shift our posture to fix it. But we choose to not do that. We allow the discomfort to exist. We recognize our reaction to it - aversion - and we let that go as well. We sit, letting the knee do what it's going to do. Then, we return to the breath. Soon, a dog starts barking outside. Our first instinct is to get frustrated because we're being bothered and distracted. But we don't go down that path either. We just let the dog bark. We remove all opinion and judgement and reaction. We don't label it. We don't do anything at all. And once again, we return to the breath. We do this over and over and over, and as we mentally leave it all alone and be okay with it, we are strengthening this ability to accept.

We treat fears and worries and regrets in the same manner, using the mind and body as a practice field on which we strengthen our capacity to carry the weights of life. Much of our anxiety around aging is rooted in a mind that is constantly time-traveling, either lamenting or yearning for the past, or nervously projecting into a future of potential decline or difficulty. By training the mind to observe our thoughts and feelings without judging them, by keeping the mind anchored in the present, we can, in time, begin to dismantle this mental habit. We gain easier access to the opportunity to appreciate our current reality without the distracting noise of regret and worry, and in the space left behind, we can find some peace.

Now, none of this is to say that we flatly accept the ailments that befall us and then stop taking care for ourselves. We don't. We keep seeing our doctors and taking our medications and watching our diets and exercising regularly. We keep doing the things that help us maintain our physical health. But we meditate to maintain our mental health, through the creaky joints and the thinning hair and the weakening eyesight, so that while traveling this path, we are able to better do it all with grace and joy and peace, for ourselves and for others. We meditate so that when we catch our reflection in the mirror at the end of the aisle by the winter coats and feel old, we notice the thought, and the attending emotions, we accept them for what they are, we smile at ourselves for having not been bothered by it all, and we simply move on, because in that moment, we have accepted.