Celebrating another year of exploration
This week I turn a year older, and I am pretty okay with this reality.
In fact, I expect that the day will slip past without much revelation, because life really does happen in the long term. At this stage in the game, I think it’s safe to say that none of us are really keen to experience dramatic change over the course of a 24-hour period; we’ve got enough crap to deal with on a recurring basis.
As a kid, you expect your day to include cake and presents that document your progress on a steep learning curve that doesn’t level out until your twenties. Or maybe that happens in your thirties. Hell, I don’t know. At any rate, as the years continue to ring up, these here birthdays don’t seem to hold the same kind of expectation or gravitas that they once did when you were little.
As you get older, life tends to become complicated in the most nebulous of ways. Your turn on this merry-go-round of expectation/disappointment/victory starts to lose its mystique, and sometimes the looping action can leave you with plenty of motion sickness. If you’ve hopped on a playground swingset lately, then you know what I’m talking about.
But I’m not writing to say that life becomes depressing and worn out as you advance in your years. Instead, I would say that as you grow older, you learn to refine your expectations and develop a real appreciation for the more simple things in life. You learn to appreciate living life at the ground level.
At thirty-six, here are some of the big dicta that rule my life:
- Your actions should match your words.
- Do what you care about as well as you can (someone else made this up, not me).
- Nothing is going to turn out as you expect it.
- Your body will never bounce back like it did when you were a carefree Chartreuse-guzzling sixteen year old.
- Empathy is an underrated trait.
- Your diplomas are bullshit; you are never going to stop learning stuff.
- Communication becomes exponentially more difficult with each passing year.
- Almost everyone is fundamentally the same as they were in their formative years.
- Your coping skills are no better than they were as a teenager- you just get better at hiding them.
- I still smile because I have no idea what’s going on.
As I continue to build upon this dripping sandcastle of life constructed right next to the shoreline, I realize the importance of keeping perspective. Whatever we all do here on this earth is not going to last long, so it’s best to choose your battles wisely. With a little luck, we’ll see ourselves through to another passing year, and if we are really lucky, those victories will be served up with some really good chocolate cake and ice cream.
As always, thanks for reading.