How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
I bought a card saying this when I was in high school; I loved the concept that age only has the meaning it’s given.
I’m a number of years old today; this is my first birthday that I feel my age, whatever that means. Every adult birthday before this, it always felt like an achievement. Like “Damn right, I’m another year older! I deserve this new badge of wisdom.”
Today I feel like I am whatever age I believe I am. I hope people keep guessing my age ‘wrong.’ (I’m pretty sure most people think I’m a child…). Every time I get carded, which I’ll admit is less and less, I always give an impressive ‘thank you’ to the human that thought I might not be 21. At this point, I just wanna give credence to and do what I want; it’s so ironically ‘childish’ to think we can do what we want, thinking we can do what we want is literally the only way we can actually do what we want! And the system of society wins again.
I think people pick and choose what they learn in this life. I had a mentor once say, you can either work the same year over and over, again and again, or you can grow. I think that’s just true for life too. You can be on your death bed and have the same level of relational understanding to others as when you were a teenager. You can have the same belief in what’s possible as when you started believing there was a limit. The world can either be for you or against you, depending on what you believe.
Sometimes, I’ve found, the universe doesn’t relent, it just keeps throwing the same shit in your face over and over until you finally say “stop please!” (usually with far less polite language) and you gotta make a move, one way or another. Sometimes we think we skirt the issues by ‘not making a choice.’ I’d argue that’s impossible, everything we do is a choice on some level, but sometimes, it does feel like there is no choice; I kinda think that’s the ultimate choice though, what do you choose when you’re down to the wire?
It’s bound to be messy and scary, but only because we have an expectation of how it should be. Society wins again!
There’s this ever growing compass in me I try SO HARD to ignore; one might call her my intuition, but I feel like that makes her sound much more magical than she feels. There are times that I know it looks like I’m making a choice, it seems like I’m making a choice, but it doesn’t feel like a choice at all. It feels like I was just on a path with options and all of a sudden all these ‘road closed’ signs pop up and I’m like “wait, where are we goin??”
Killin’ it.
And then I end up living in a van with my cats starting a dream business.
I have no idea how I got where I am, but each step of the way has been a choice even though I had no idea where it was leading me. I know I’m here for a reason and I’m truly excited (and very nervous) to find out where it all leads.
How old would I be if I didn’t know how old I was?
I’d Peter Pan it.
The myth that we will someday somehow reach a ‘destination’ is crazy to me. What will we reach? Has anyone gotten there? What’s happening at the finish line? Is it as good as they all say? Why are we rushing so hard to get there?
I just think we should take a beat. What’s that saying, ‘the journey is the destination?’ I’m gonna go with that, so I’m either always making it or I’ll never make it, and it’s really all the same.