by Sivasankar Venkata Krishnan (OshoVenkat)
There was a time I looked in the mirror and saw loss.
The loss of hair.
The loss of youth.
The slow fading of a body that once stood tall with unshakable pride.
I used to run my hand over my head and feel a strange emptiness. Not just the baldness, but something deeper — a sense that I was somehow becoming invisible to the world. Society had conditioned me to believe that aging was a fall, a failure, something to hide behind black dye or hats, laughter, and denial.
But Osho once said, “Don’t fight with your aging; celebrate it. You are becoming ripe, seasoned, complete.”
That struck something inside me.
Slowly, I began to see differently.
Not overnight, but like Osho’s silence — slowly descending, wrapping itself around me until I could no longer run from the truth I had feared:
Aging is not loss.
It is arrival.
Now, when I run my fingers over my bald head, I feel peace. I feel power.
This is not the absence of hair.
It is the presence of acceptance.
It is the crown that life has placed gently upon me — earned not through conquest, but through surrender.
Each wrinkle on my skin is a line of poetry written by time.
Each scar, a story of resilience.
And this bald head?
It is the clear sky where all illusions have melted — a reflection of who I truly am, without masks, without pretending.
I no longer chase the younger version of myself. He was beautiful, yes.
But I was always busy proving something — to the world, to others, even to myself.
Now, I don’t have to prove anything.
Now, I live in truth.
In stillness.
In simplicity.
I’ve stopped acting young.
Not because I cannot, but because I no longer need to.
The joy I feel now is not in appearing strong, but in being soft.
Not in running fast, but in walking slowly, mindfully, feeling the earth beneath my feet, the breeze against my bare head, and the presence of something sacred in the ordinary.
My mental health — my inner peace — bloomed not with remedies, but with realization:
That nature never makes mistakes.
That aging is not a punishment, but a privilege.
That the body changing is just a reminder that the soul is becoming.
Today, I look at myself and I smile.
Not the smile that seeks approval.
But the smile of one who has stopped running, stopped hiding.
The smile of one who knows:
Bald is not empty. It is complete.
Old is not the end. It is the beginning of true presence.
And in that, I have found a freedom I never knew in my youth.
I have found me.