Silver lining

As someone who didn't start widely revealing his naked body until well into adulthood, issues of aging are never very far from my mind. But despite the vaunted youth-oriented nature of our culture, I have been lucky to find middle age (or later, depending on how you define it) to be a relatively comfortable period with its own special perqs.

Sometimes (though probably not as often as I'd like), I'm comfortable enough with my age that I even let my beard grow out to show its full silvery nature, free of any cosmetic tampering. It was on such an occasion last year that I posed for photographer Andrew Adam Caldwell, producing this month's photo set, Silver age, available now in the Nakedism collection of galleries.

Of course, the original Silver Age had little to do with aging per se. The term comes to us from the Greek writer Hesiod, whose poem Works and Days describes the Silver Age as the second of five "Ages of Man" in which people lived as children for a hundred years, only to age suddenly and die.

Perhaps Hesiod's Silver Age isn't terribly different from my own. For even as my hair grows silvery, I still enjoy much the same freedom and frolicking that children enjoy, albeit with a distinctly adult bent. When my time comes, I hope it is the quick descent that Hesiod describes. But for now, I'm just enjoying the silver lining of growing older.