This weekend, I will hit the big 4-0. This puts me on what they call, the back nine, of at least my highly functioning years. If I’m lucky.
Ironically, people have suspected that this has been my age since I was in my early 20s. While this served me in my career, it’s never been a bright spot for my vanity.
But aging is a privilege that has been denied to many of my dear friends. Since I was 14, almost every year (with a few exceptions) I’ve sadly lost a close-aged peer. And while the current state of my life is not the 40’s entrée I ever imagined, I enter it with gratitude with those friends in mind.
Here are the lessons I’ve been accumulating as I close the front nine:
Hard Lessons
I’m never done. Just when I think I’ve done all my healing, I discover I have more to do.
My razor sharp intuition and ability to read people is a hard-earned blessing. Most all of my woes have come from ignoring it.
If I have an emotional tie to a person, that intuition is often completely disabled.
There’s a great deal of wisdom in Mark Twain’s saying: “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do, than by the ones you do.” This has unequivocally been true in my life. But the absence of disappointment, doesn’t mean the absence of consequences.
Everything is temporary. The best times don’t feel as good as I thought they would and the bad times seem like they will last forever.
Everything I hear and every reaction I have is filtered through what I heard in childhood. It’s on me to excavate the shit out of that filter so I can hear clearly.
The absence of pain and trauma is not necessarily happiness. Numbness can feel a lot like contentment. Numbness has been a safe, pleasurable cocoon. But I realize there might be more.
To love someone means to allow them to be who and what they are without any insistence that they satisfy you. Which also might mean that I have to love them from afar.
People don’t just change. But people in pain just might.
The older I get, the more pressure and insistence I feel for constant productivity. I am trying to learn the art of doing nothing. Besides, some of the most enjoyable days of my life have been spent in bed watching reruns of Parking Wars. {I’ll still double down on that.}
A wise man once told me that life works to the degree in which you keep your commitments. That is a huge bitch of a truth.
Vanity Lessons
Exercise is everything. Smart exercise. Muscle building exercise. Cardio lasts the day. Strength training, done consistently, lasts forever.
High heels will wreck your feet. Don’t ignore the doctor’s warnings, or you’ll be limited to flats-only footwear before you hit 40.
For the love of leather…do not go in a tanning bed. And never let your face, chest, or hands be without SPF. Yes, hands. Who knew they were such a source of aging?
If you don’t feel good about something, fix it. It might be expensive and it might not even be necessary. But feeling bad about yourself is incredibly costly in so many areas of life.
Skin care from a drugstore is a like a vibrator without batteries. Useless. Gotta get the painfully pricy stuff from the doc or esthetician. It’s one of those things you have to ante up for.
Sugar is the devil. And the devil is everywhere.
Wear yourself however you want – clothes, hair, makeup, all of it. If it makes you happy, it should be on you. If it makes you feel nothing, kick it up. This is your life. DO YOU. And do it proudly.