Then Something in Us Smiles

A three-meter-tall monster in a denim jacket lumbers onto the stage.
Its eyes glow red, gums and fangs shining.
In its hand is a bloody axe.

The mascot, called Eddie, looks like it’s escaped both from hell and the 80s—all at once.
Grey-bearded men on the floor, wearing Eddie shirts—and a whole spectrum of others alongside them—roar with delight.
Like old friends, paths crossing again.

Over two hours, the stage overflows with epic tales of cursed sailors, visions, and life’s secret forces.
Dogfights from World War II, the number of the beast, fear of the dark, a condemned man’s inner world, and a nuclear-loaded apocalypse all rush by in the same whirlwind.
At times, the crowd smiles wider than at a children’s concert.

Someone might say it’s all childish.
Perhaps it is—and that’s exactly why it’s so alive.

I’m at an Iron Maiden concert in Stockholm.
The tour celebrates the band’s half-century journey—a span of time that sounds more like myth than a measure.
Just a century ago, people in their fifties were already nearing the end. Now, a metal band that age fills stadiums.

The experience resonates through my nervous system for a week.
It echoes in the body both as the absurd spectacle of human life, and as a strange reminder of something entirely different—almost from beyond time.

On one hand it was a quick, two-hour rush of adrenaline.
On the other, a quiet reminder of how even decades slip by, often unnoticed.

.

The monsters on stage don’t age.
They simply swap axes for swords, crank up the speed, grin even wider.
Even Eddie steps lighter than before.

But the rest of us—we have numbers, years, and their quiet weight.
Milestone ages that bring thoughts of what we can or cannot be.
Assumptions that sometimes make us feel confined.
And the sense that time moves on—without stopping to ask.

The awareness that perhaps there won’t be another tour.
That the moments we once took for granted were precisely those that would later echo back only as a tender trace of nostalgia.

That night in the stadium, in the middle of that storm of adrenaline,
the codes tied to years and time seemed to blur for many.
It no longer felt important, not entirely real.

There was only the experience that made the heart forget time.
The burden of years melted away, leaving just this moment—and something lighter.

What if that feeling is the true me?

Could it also feel more real if you woke up today with no memory of your age?
What would you do then?
What would you expect of yourself?

Would you forget for a moment how someone your age is supposed to behave?
Or how to speak in certain situations?
Would you say “yes” to an adventure in the middle of an ordinary day?
Skip over white tiles on the sidewalk?
Live slower—or run faster, simply because you can and it feels more real?
Would you be freer? More creative? More spontaneous?
Less calculated, less serious, less sensible?
Would you let yourself laugh out loud more often, without a reason—even when it’s not exactly what’s expected?

And maybe right then, life would feel gentler.
When you’re no longer trying so hard to live it.

.

We admire youth as if it were a universal standard—
and the best of us get to carry it the longest.
We’ve raised it into a kind of currency that buys visibility, credibility, the right to take up space.

It’s often seen as an achievement, not just another cycle among many.
Not as a raw, preparatory phase, but as the goal itself.

We’ve developed countless ways to delay aging—
yet we rarely pause to wonder how to grow older with expansion.
Or if aging could be an opportunity, perhaps even a kind of fulfillment.

This youth placed on a pedestal usually refers to appearance—
seldom to curiosity, mental flexibility, or the joy of the heart.
But sometimes life shows what it could truly be.

In 2013, up the spiral staircase of my then yoga studio, climbed my oldest student.
She was 97. A brief encounter, and the roles quickly reversed: she became my teacher.
She came to her first yoga class simply because she never had before.

For the entire hour she smiled—
genuinely happy just to experience, with no aim.
No success, no failure.
No thought that she should be able to do something special.
She left smiling and gave me a hug.
I never saw her again, but in that short visit she managed to show us the essence of what we were all striving for—through all our method and discipline.

Our 97-year-old guest was already there. She knew it herself.
And after that short meeting, a few of us, too, caught a small glimpse of something different.
Something true.
Something timeless.

.

We strain so much for youth.
And sometimes, in the process, we grow older on the inside.
Life becomes an endless project where the self is kept in shape by schedules, relentless self-improvement, serums, and carefully crafted stories of who we are and what we ought to be.

As if pausing would take away what makes life truly alive.
And so, sometimes, life starts to taste a little less like life.

But what if aging isn’t heavy at all—
and it’s what’s heavy that makes us grow old?

In those moments when iconic monsters flood the stage, decades can lose meaning for a while.
And when ageless 97-year-olds rise up spiral stairs, smiling, everything essential might be revealed.

Maybe aging isn’t just decline or loss.
Maybe it’s about opening and yielding, as time slowly wears away all that wasn’t lasting—and so wasn’t true.
When stories, expectations and facades thin out, they become translucent.
When they lose their power, what’s left is something that never needed approval or accomplishment.

Something that has sat quietly in place all along.
Something we were always seeking, but in the wrong places.
Something we had hidden beneath roles and imagined worth.

And when we meet it, it’s like waking, relieved, from a heavy dream—
where we were fighting our own inner monsters.
Monsters whose axes were always sharp.

.

We’re drawn almost unknowingly toward moments and situations where we believe the weight of life might lighten, if only for a while.
We gather for sweaty nights in stadiums.
Quiet moments in yoga studios at the top of spiral stairs.

Experiences where we aren’t our age.
Experiences where we are simply one with the experience itself, with no need for a heavy self and its everyday worries.
As if some gentle current were simply living life through us.

That same current stays unchanged—like a quiet pulse that knows no years.
So the deepest feeling within us, that silent sense of being, doesn’t fade even if the decades change everything else.

Maybe what we truly are is, in the end, very simple.
Something like a child’s curiosity.
A wish to marvel and smile, for no reason at all.

And if we truly stop to notice that we even exist,
it can feel so strange and vast
that we can’t help but laugh.
At everything.

Right then, when we stop shielding ourselves from life, time’s grip might loosen.
And an ageless light can rise through our whole being.
In that light, many of our limits might reveal themselves as only shadows—
that for a moment looked more real than they ever were.

In the childlike joy and smile of that 97-year-old there were no barriers, roles or control—
only something that wanted to live, move, and taste life right now.

And right there, very quietly, opens that something that has been waiting for us all along—
like a door that was never locked.
Something that doesn’t know or count years.
To which aging is simply becoming lighter.

Then something in us smiles.

...

If something in this kept breathing inside you,
perhaps we're walking the same path.
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