“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?” – Satchel Paige
Age is all about perception and relativity. I am a newly turned twenty-eight year old. Considering that “fifty is the new forty” and “forty is the new twenty-five,” I’m barely pre-pubescent. For me, though, twenty-eight was like my thirty. Not to be confused with what will be my actual thirty. Thirty is that mythical age I’ve aspired to since I was sixteen, which essentially means my thirty will be like my twenty-one.
Still with me?
I’ve now witnessed a few friends thirtieth birthdays and not everyone shares my enthusiasm for entering the 4th decade of their lives. For some of us, thirty is that dreaded crest of a rollercoaster where you hang suspended for a second, looking back on your twenties, before plummeting downhill into real adulthood. If you’re not strapped in, feet firmly planted on the ground, you might fall out.
My feeling about thirty is that it will be the age when my life finally emerges from this steep, winding canyon to coast along the open road at exhilarating speed. Except this happy middle, if you will, would be contingent on having made every correct turn to find my way out of the canyon in the first place. Thus, twenty-eight was like a marker for my final lap…
Am I strapped in? Feet firmly on the ground? Wait – was that last turn supposed to be a right instead of a left? Shit. What am I doing with my life?!
More than one psychic (a recurring theme of my life) had told me twenty-eight would be my year. By the time I turn twenty-eight I will be very influential in my business. By the time I’m twenty-eight I will have hit my stride. Coupled with a self-imposed wunderkind stigma and I had a lot riding on twenty-eight. I started freaking out as my birthday approached, because I was nowhere near where I thought I should be for those predictions to be true. Now that I’m here, I realize I still have a whole year of twenty-eight to make it happen. After all, I’m only a newborn twenty-eight.
I've spent the majority of my years leaning headlong into adulthood, but now… I think a deeper part of me is responding to some starting-line gunshot and pulling out all the stops. Like, the adult me suddenly woke up and heard the little me banging on the door, yelling, “You’re never going to get there without me, so let me out, you big dummy!”
Because, yeah… The little me got left behind.
The little me is the original me. Just like the little you is the original you. At the end of the day, the little you is the real you and the you we should all be answering to. We become so removed from the person we were when all we cared about was just being, that we forget some of the fundamental things that make us happy. The roots of our dreams are formed during childhood but, over time, experience and necessity chips away at them.
To a certain extent, it’s inevitable. You get older, you get drunk, you flunk a class, you have sex, you crash a car… You get a job, you get credit cards, you get an apartment, you get a new car, you get bills… You experience doubt, worry, frustration, disappointment, heartbreak, loss, and tragedy. You grow up. Life intervenes and the little you gets benched because you have more important things to think about. But that might be one of the greatest mistakes we all make.
“When I was little…” I say it all the time – increasingly so over the past few years.
When I was little… I loved to play pretend. I acted out imagined scenarios with imaginary friends. Once I pretended I was driving a car when suddenly I went blind… and I rode my bike into the pool. (I always had a flair for drama!)
When I was little… I would practice turning and posing in the mirror just like they did during the theme songs of Saved by the
When I was little… I’d rock out to Def Leppard and Madonna on my Walkman, I’d sing and dance to MTV in my room, and I loved to make mix tapes.
When I was little… I started writing a script for Bartman: The Movie.
When I was little (adolescence is still childhood)… I could lose myself in writing or drawing for hours.
When I was little it didn’t matter what anyone else thought.
I didn’t think about why or how. I didn’t second guess myself or worry if I was good enough. I didn’t think about failing. I just did things that made me happy. I thought I was pretty F-ing awesome... and that was all that mattered.
I lost that unerring self-love, that infallible confidence – the original me – somewhere between then and now. As soon as I equated my talents with the potential to earn money... as soon as I realized I had the power to change my life, literally, in my hands… That’s when the little me started to fall behind.
As I got older, the pressure I was feeling to just get there, to make money, to reach success, became crushing. All consuming, really. No matter what, no matter how, I just had to be successful. I set off in hot pursuit of money, designer labels, a nice car and bigger, faster success. And I completely lost myself along the way.
My writing – the one thing that used to come so readily to me – stuttered to a stop. If I pushed myself, I could get words out in fits and starts, but never in the same easy flow. My simple desire to tell a story got all tangled up with thinking I had to do it in order to achieve something tangible. The fun of writing something that I found interesting or entertaining became irrelevant when I started worrying about anyone else finding it entertaining enough to give me money. I’ve only been intent on reaching for the carrot dangling at the end of the stick. It turns out that’s just not the way it works.
So here I am, finally understanding that I haven’t been doing the things I wanted to do for the pure love of doing them. My innocent joy when creating something, my jubilant pride in my own abilities, my love of my own mind with all its varied and quirky facets... That’s what got left behind.
Twenty-eight was my reckoning. I feel more confident now that thirty will be the age I've been waiting for: the age of celebration. Because now I get it. And slowly but surely - whatever it takes - I’m reconnecting with the original me. I’m drawing again, I’m writing free form; the way I did... when I was little. I’m doing it for myself and no one else. It’s necessary to please the little me, otherwise the big, adult me can't move forward.
You never realize how important that connection is until it’s gone. That relationship with your original self is what reminds you where you came from, why you wanted the things you want and what made you happy in the beginning, when joy was your only concern…
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2 comments:
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love this one! AND I think this is one you could hands down submit to any woman's magazine. I FELT this one! Go B!
"Self-imposed wunderkind stigma"...I so hear you on that one! It's hard to let it go and just create what makes us happy, without thought to money or fame - but we can do it. I think. I hope.
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