I blink hard every time i think of the number 35. I try to remember my mom when she was 35. I try to remember how I got here and if I feel like I’m “supposed to” at this age. I ask myself if I have missed a window of opportunity to which I can never return because I am turning this NUMBER. I laugh a lot at how much OLDER it seems in my mind than 34. I laugh harder when I reflect on how this year has made me, in so many ways, SO much younger.
Fifteen Things I’ve learned since my last birthday:
- Relaxing a grasping fist creates a receiving hand.
- Magic can really happen, no matter how jaded you believe you are.
- Everybody has something to teach (I didn’t say all the lessons were fun to learn).
- We’re not as stuck as we think we are. Paying close, yet detached and amused attention to the icky lessons often means not having to repeat them.
- We are almost always embodying the seeds of what we are seeking.
- Everything hasn’t been done before. Creativity is abundant and infinite.
- Debt is not quite as scary or insurmountable as it seems on paper.
- Children can transform “grown up” old souls into young spirits.
- Love doesn’t die, it just changes shape to fit the current container.
- I can swim a mile, bike 24 and run 6 all together. who knew?
- Abundance/poverty is almost always just a state of mind.
- Asking for what I want usually works when I’m specific about what my heart calls for as long as I am un-attached to the outcome.
- Surrendering to pleasure doesn’t directly inspire punishment.
- The flow of generosity and giving has nothing to do with reciprocity.
- I’ve learned to see that opportunities that I don’t or can’t take are often omens of more appropriate things to come, not missed chances.
I’m grateful to breathe in. I’m grateful to breathe out. I have to pinch myself when I think of how many blessings have passed through my life in the last 12 months. Things that only grace, faith, a willingness to do the grunt work and a sense of humor could bring about. 2 years ago, you couldn’t have paid me to believe that I would feel so curious and fully alive at 35. . . I still grieve, cry, fight, surrender, experience unfulfilled longing and frustration, but somehow, I’m significantly more content day-in and day-out with being blessed, flawed, mostly clueless and human.
Thank you, Wendy, for sharing how you, and many of us, feel about passing one of those birthday milestones. I admire your candor and wisdom!
I have been busy taking in my part in hard times of late. I have been trying to acknowledge and apologize when I see my part. This is so hard and vulnerable for me to admit sometimes. My pride is not helpful in relaxing my grasp on my attachment to the illusion that I have control of anything outside of myself in the end.
SO beautiful – I especially love “Surrendering to pleasure doesn’t directly inspire punishment.”
I think part of getting older is accepting different pleasures and goals – nothing wrong with that. We can rage against the dying of the light, or we can learn to have fun in the dark.