thoughts on getting older
Propaganda I Will Not Fall For:
Calling yourself old when you are 28
Ok so, as a 28-year-old teenage girl, I do find a lot of value in the process of getting older...however, I refuse to believe I am old.
Now that the weather has picked up and we can leave our homes without a jacket (it is the optimal t-shirt and jeans weather), I have been taking advantage of my daily walks again. I have been thinking a lot about my consumption not just in terms of material items, but also what I’m consuming through television, music, reddit posts, social situations, and books.
I think because of our current online-culture, reading a book or watching a new TV show (or movie) can feel productive. Not that it isn’t—it’s always good to nurture your brain with new perspectives, words, and ideas—but what about spending your time doing nothing really at all? Now what I mean by this isn’t necessarily laying-in-the-bed staring-at-the-ceiling nothing, but maybe taking a walk in your neighborhood without headphones. Drawing in your sketchbook with no clear end result. Dusting off the sudoku book you somehow acquired maybe from a Christmas stocking and trying out a few rounds. Pulling a row of tarot cards and then looking up what they mean on the Internet because although you love the art of tarot, you still haven’t mastered the difference between a non-reverse and reverse pulled Queen of Pentacles.
My pull this week. Someone who knows tarot…tap in
Sure, these things all require doing something, but to me, it’s expansion in its simplest form.
I think there’s some confusion when it comes to life expansion, that you need to travel and see the world, that you need to have dated every type of person, that you need to go to all the DJs playing in your local metropolitan area, to really understand life. Sometimes, it’s just something as simple as reaching into your inner core, alone, creatively and analytically, to expand yourself at the very base level.
So ok, I started this by talking about getting older. What’s the correlation here? Well, it’s that these things did not matter to me when I was 23 years old. Even when I was 27 years old. And although I am only (barely) a year older than that now, I truly feel this deep shift in how I’d like to live my life. I think it’s really cool because at 23 or 27, I could totally imagine distancing myself from this value change, thinking that I’ll always want to be wearing the next best thing to stay relevant amongst my peers, or that staying out until 3AM on a Wednesday will provide validation to my life.
These things are still things I don’t mind doing (sorry Jess I really am not going out until 3AM on a workday ever…) and I don’t agree that they don’t bring any value. I’ve had the most fun doing some of the things that I thought were going to be the most important to me for the rest of my life. But now I’m looking at it all in a different way, in a way of “fuck, yeah, I’m just going to keep getting older,” so how do I want to spend my minutes, how do I want to expand myself so I can enjoy all of the things as my present self, and how my future-self would imagine their life? Thank you Time!
This all being said, I think getting older is the best thing ever. We were told from birth to “stop growing,” to “never grow up,” then when we hit our 20s, are constantly being told to “grow up” and to “act your age.” Everything up ‘til now always felt defiant. To stay right where I am, to having to do more, to feeling like I should know exactly who I am already, all at the same time. And presently, all of that stuff doesn’t really matter cause again—fuck, I’m just going to keep getting older.
On my walks lately, I’ve seen positive signs of aging. Two right off the top of my head: a “Happy 100th Birthday” banner hanging outside of an apartment in Fort Greene and a “75” cake topper outside of a garbage can in Williamsburg. You keep getting old, and you keep celebrating that. You celebrate it with the people who have been there forever, the new people you meet during those 3AM nights, with yourself. The point is that the true propaganda is that you’l have your whole life together by 30, and even though I knew this was not the truth all along, it’s staring me right in the face as I prepare to turn 29, and I don’t even feel afraid of it. I see it as an opportunity. To keep changing and understanding myself, while recognizing what’s truly important to me. I feel positive about the future. I feel daunted by the future. I do not know what’s to come…but it’s coming. And as I write this, I will make the claim that I embrace it. And I hope that if I do make it to 75 or 100, that she is proud of me now and that here and there, she is still penning sudoku in the sun.
Disclaimer: I will not pretend that I have getting older all figured out. I know when I am 30 and look back at this I will roll my eyes and be like “gurl.”