It takes a certain kind of courage to look in the mirror and honor our wrinkles, grey hair, and other indications that we’re no longer on the sunny side of twenty. But would an elder trade the insight and (hopefully!) wisdom that accrues with years?

Maturity is literally “reading between the lines” of the facial roadmap to our soul, according to wise woman Ariel Spilsbury, now in her early 70s. “Winter” is only less lovely than “summer” if we prefer one season over the others.

Angeles Arrien, one of my great teachers, told the story of a child who reverently traced her grandmother’s facial lines and then exclaimed, “Grandma, you have such pretty designs on your face!” That’s a powerful redirect. Reverse mortgage professionals, and anyone else who knows an older person or plans to be one, can choose to perceive gray hair and wrinkles as beautiful.

In the Introduction to her wry memoir, Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty, Diane Keaton, now 69, takes a candid look at beauty and aging. She writes, “I’ve learned to see beauty where I never saw it before. But only because my expectations are more realistic. My favorite part of my body is my eyes. Not because of their color and not because of their shape, but because of what they see. When I was in my twenties and thirties I wanted my appearance to be more interesting than the beauty that surrounded me. It was a fool’s folly.”

Through no-holds-barred stories about her life, she explores the many facets of beauty. In the chapter Healing Humor: “A smile is appreciation, and empathy, and wonder. But laughter is release. Laughter is letting go. Babies laugh three hundred times a day. Adults twenty, if we’re lucky. Does growing up — and, in my case, growing old — have to be characterized by increased seriousness and less laughter? I intend to join the babies of the world and laugh more. Especially since — and this is a fact — laughter leads to less stress. It just does. So while smiling is lovely…laughter is beautiful.”

In the chapter Old Is Gold, after naming her many Baby Boom acting cohorts with no plans to retire, Keaton ruminates, “It’s ironic, isn’t it? I was never a fan of gold. I’ve never owned a gold watch. I passed on gold gowns with gold accessories for the red carpet. ‘The golden years’ is my least favorite metaphor for the period of life I’m living in. I have no interest in espousing the golden age of movies. I can’t stand endless retirement commercials where two attractive elderly people smile at each other as they hold hands while walking into a soothing landscape, as if to say, ‘It’s so peaceful accepting the autumn of life.’ Golden oldies. The golden rule. A heart of gold. Worth its weight in gold. Gold shmold. The one saying that resonates through example, the one that has heart, the one that’s worth its weight in gold, is simple and true: Old is gold.”

As we redefine what it means to grow old today, the focus on inner beauty is blooming. A psychoanalyst describes how entering the Ms. New Jersey Senior America Pageant was more cooperative than competitive. In an essay for The Huffington Post, Dr. Goldberg writes, “For me, the meaning of the experience was about spending hours and hours with my fellow contestants, learning a dance, supporting each other when any of us forgot which way to turn and messed up the whole routine.”

Perhaps as elders, we at last return to the truth we instinctively understood as young children: life is more fun when we laugh, and when we help one other. This is what creates true beauty in the world. And everybody wins.