34 and counting.
An annual review of where life has taken me.
As I woke up on my 34th birthday late last week, I had no deep yearning for reflection. As a lot of readers may empathise with, the whole day can feel a bit overwhelming with all the attention and focus beaming directly towards you. Throughout the day I realised a handful of things:
My ability to receive love is restricted
I need to remove myself into my own space to think clearly
How easy it is to stay plugged into the ‘society’s hamster wheel’
Firstly, being open to receive love sounds like a fairly mundane and biological exercise. This birthday more-so than others, made me feel uncomfortable at times receiving peoples well wishes and gifts. Perhaps it’s a symptom of parenthood, inevitably parents spend so much time giving to our children and sacrificing our own needs that maybe we have lost the skill of taking a well earned rest, a pat on the back, softening under the spotlight of recognition and love.
So often stagnation or rest means that your environment is falling further into a chaotic state. The washing up seems to multiply, spying the floor through the gaps in strewn out toys becomes increasingly difficult, paying the bills on time and responding to messages seems improbable at best. To take it easy induces a fear of being swallowed whole by life itself, so we trudge onwards, ticking off the to do list, cleaning up only for it to become messy again the next day.
Leaning into my softness is something that has been a focus for me over the past months and continues to remain front of mind - the art of softening. How can I be softer with children, my fiancé, my family, my friends, my work and most importantly myself. For so long hardness has been my daily driver, pushing, deflecting, striving to achieve outcome (X) rather than acknowledge my feelings (Y). I am starting to reflect and be grateful for my hardness, it was a mechanism that kept me safe when I did not have safety (in a psychological / emotional sense) in my life.
I read an excerpt from a book not long ago and it jarred my belief system to the core. The author explored a concept, consider 1000 people that know you. For some of those people you are the villain of their story (rightly or wrongly), for others you are their hero, a deep thinker, a trusted friend, a leader, an underwhelming acquaintance, a scattered stranger, or just plain vanilla. You are likely seen 1000 different ways by 1000 different people, and then the question to be asked becomes - who am I really?
In essence we are all of those people, if we are perceived then we are identified, this is the law of the universe essentially. If we perceive the weather to be changing we have identified or labelled the thing as ‘weather’. The only main difference is we prioritise our own perception of self over others. Yet in reality our own perception is just another one of the 1000 different identities, no more important than the next.
Whilst an abstract concept to some, this landed right in my chest. It sparked a sense of freedom in my mind; as someone who has been held a prisoner for so long by my own perception of self. I have always held a torch of unrealistically high expectations up to my own self-image, as the old saying goes “you are likely to punish yourself more than anyone else ever could”. I have found this to be true for me.
Exploring this notion gave me comfort in the fact that all of those 999 identities in this world are largely (if not solely) out of my control. It allowed me to loosen the reins on my own self-perception, to give grace and softness to a little boy trying ever so hard to do great things and be a great person. An internal apology swirled around inside of my head and my heart, a silent hug to myself, a watery smile to my own reflection in the mirror. Perhaps the tides are changing in how I see myself showing up in this world.
As I reflected on my 34rd birthday, I largely felt like the last 4 years were inconsequential, as if I’d turned 30 one day and then the next day I was approaching 34 with no warning. Yet, on paper this is a ludicrous statement. In the past four years I have done the following:
Welcomed two beautiful boys into the world
Left my hometown to move overseas
Moved back from overseas to setup our new life in a new state
Changed jobs twice, in two entirely different fields
Sold a house, bought a house, considering selling that house now
There are two ideas that spring to mind when I consider why I was feeling like I had not achieved anything in the past four years. One, it is extremely hard to keep up with the pace of modern society, in Australia particularly we are consumers and we always want a bigger house, a better car, a more memorable holiday, a lavish wedding and anything else that gets rammed down our throats by modern advertising and social media.
The second thoughtful notion is a realisation of what I actually value. In the past four years I have not devoted a decent amount of time to personal growth, I haven’t been meditating, I haven’t been going to workshops or working with mentors. I feel largely unchanged from a personal perspective as I’ve been so busy keeping my head above water. This realisation ushers in a new devotion to understanding myself and to nurture my self-to-self relationship, taking time to soften, taking time to rest.
As my birthday neared to a close I sat by myself in a steam room. All of these thoughts and feels came rushing up. I needed the time and space to myself to feel safe enough to explore my bodies sensations, to check my thoughts and to anchor myself to safety and belonging.
In reflection, I have achieved a lot over the past four years, perhaps not in alignment with my own perception of where I would be at 34 years old. Therein lies the paradox, that someone may in fact see me as I wish to see myself, so that reality does exist somewhere, so that idea does give me peace and contentment.
Here is a poem I wrote years ago about realising you had fallen back into the trap of keeping up with crowd around you:
