I found an olden days poster in my attic and it made me think.

I have been having a good tidy up and clear out of late and while I was up in my attic and came across and old poster which depicts:"The Ten ages of man".  
I took the poster to a local antique/collectors shop and asked for an opinion. I was told that the poster was not of any significant value as it was a bit worse for wear. However it might fetch something at auction as it was of some historical interest. However, I was not particularly interested in selling the item. What interested me was that the poster had a rather Dickensian feel about it and reflected life and times of those days. First of all it is clear that life was in some way more simpler but in other way somewhat the same.
The religious influence was also more stronger - the title for example "Edens Have" - which means; "The Garden of Eden" - meaning; Earth. Another factor is that it is clear that the male was seen more important than the woman. Life is seen from the male perspective. Perhaps there was another poster made showing the stages of life from a. woman´s perspective, bit I doubt it.

I decided to restore the poster using photoshop

I decided to scan in the poster and restore the colours and retouch the image itself. The information was actually originally in latin so I needed help from a. relative of mine who is fluent in this old language.
I love doing jobs like this as this was a job I used to do professionally some years ago now.
It took some hours of work but I am rather satisfied with the end result.
Below is a low resolution of the poster and as you can see it depicts the ten stages of life, from a male perspective. I removed the latin wording and replaced with an English translation of what was originally written in the boxes.  With the image being of a low resolution it is difficult to read what is in there so I have made close-ups of the stages so that you can read them more clearly.

From Birth to age ten.

From age 21 to age 31

From age 40 to age 60

From age 70 to age 80

From age 90 to 100

REFLECTIONS

When you see a life unfold like this before our very eyes it is difficult to ignore just how short life is and perhaps make us think what life is really all about? We are born, we live our life, and then we die. Mostly we try to ignored this FACT and, depending upon our age, we tend to use common phases to fool ourselves: "Im still young yet" - "Ive still got years ahead of me" - "scientists will find a cure for ageing"-  But then eventually the passing of time, and the reflection of our own faces in the mirror, force us to accept the inevitable truth that, in fact, not only will we get old, but we will NOT live forever.
It is said that modern society is built on the illusion that we will live forever. The media do not like  showing older people so as to keep this illusion strong. Advertisements of young people wearing fahionable clothing, travelling the world and taking part in extreme sports is carefully planned to keep this illusion alive. If older people are shown then they are carefully chosen for their apparent youthful appearance. This all adds the pressure of Hollywood actors to have plastic surgery in order to keep this illusion alive.
In 2014 the actress Kim Novak was asked to present an award at the Oscars and the reaction of her looking "old",  not only shocked audiences but it was made a big deal about by the media.

For me, this highlighted the ridiculous and unhealthy attitude of our modern society towards the natural life phenomenon of ageing. And it is only getting worse.
I worry for our younger generations who are bombarded with the idea of eternal youth. How will they cope when they find themselves also getting older. Well we already have clue to this already. According to the journal of Pediatrics - in the last 5 years, there has been a 38% increase in depression among the young - ages between 2o to.30. They are just finding the pressures of life much harder than they thought and are having "mid-life" crises 20 years before they should. This could also explain why sucide among the youth is also on the rise.
This is rather concerning and yet no one, not even the Government, seems to give a damn.

Just to reiterate this, there was a recent local news story on the Television. A land owner in the UK owned a mansion house from Elizabethan times. The roof of the house was in drastic need of repair as the wooden beams were now rotting. The owner was in a pickle because the these wooden beans were made o from the Brazil tree and it would cost a fortune to import beams from Brazil. However, as it turned out, the original owner, and builder of the house, some 150 years  ago, had already planed for this very problem in that he had planed 12 such Brazil nut trees on the property. This true story shows that, in the olden days, people understood that they would not live forever and as such they must think of future generations. This is something we definitely DO NOT do today which is why we are ruing the planet. We live in a throw away, live for today society and it seems that we actually all know this but we prefer to live in denial. "Denial is the fundamental response of human-beings" - the architect in the Matrix 2 movie. Was he right?
I do not know the answers to life's problems, but I suggest a good first step for change would be for society to face that fact that we all age and we will all die one day. In a age of uncertainty of what is actually real or not, growing old and the fact that we die, are solid facts.
We should embrace the the truth of this rather than deny them. This would at least help towards a more healthy society. 

Thank you for visiting my blog and a warm welcome back next time.