Thoughts on 30
Last week I departed from my 20s, and I cannot wait to see what being 30 is all about. Mostly this is because I feel like being in your 20s is intense. When I think about summing up what happened in the last decade for me personally, I think of learning a lot of lessons the hard way, over and over again. Of trying really hard but being in kind of a fog… sometimes a fog of ignorance or immaturity or… hmmm. Not sure what to call it but lack of money and experience. Really badly wanting to change the world but having very little guidance or direction. So wandering around the world more and learning a lot, again most of it being the hard way. Lots of injuries, lots of ‘pivotal life lessons’, lots of time alone contemplating what I was learning.
As I moved through this space of time, it felt that there was a tremendous amount of growth. These lessons started to inform actions and I gained some traction in creating the world I wanted to live in, and finding a group of people that I wanted to serve, and being willing to invest the time and money into being better at helping.
As I approached 30, I noticed myself fading away from some of the feelings that had been so prevalent for years. Feeling that I really needed to prove something, to earn my stripes, to do things the hard way. I think a lot of that revolves around the old ‘not good enough’ gremlin. Needing to prove something because I didn’t believe I was enough. Needing to have proof that I had really earned what ever I had, like really earned it. And this started to shift, and I began to allow some level of luxury, of ease, of comfort into my life. I still like challenges, but I want them to build me up rather than break me down. To take better care of myself so I could rise to bigger challenges rather than so much of the story being around falling really hard.
All of this added onto the thoughts of health that I have been pursuing and articulating recently. One of the other themes that has been so present is this idea that 30 is old. It comes from everyone feeling old by the time they are 30. That they can’t ‘get away’ with what they use to in terms of food and beverage consumption. The hangovers get worse, the food starts to add pounds, sleep gets worse, and it takes longer to recover from accidents and injury. We ‘can’t afford’ these things to happen and have to ‘be careful’ about what we put in our bodies and what activities we do. By 30 our bodies are already failing us, failing to see us through the life we wanted to live at this point.
But maybe…. we have failed our bodies, by the time we are 30. Perhaps we are not a victim to our own choices and our own integrity (or lack there of) to our bodies. Are we listening? Like truly, deeply, listening to what our bodies are telling us? When we are staring at the screen for hours and our gaze shifts to the window and our backs ache…. do we stop sitting at a screen and go outside to stretch? Or do we take a break, drink some coffee, and stare at our other screen while not working?
Lots of us get a wake up call by the time we are 30. We either have a big enough accident/diagnosis of our own, lose a love one, or realize that our stress is getting worse over the course of time and realize this will not pass without intervention. I have watched a lot of my friends make shifts right around this age. Most of it looks like it happens over night. I lose track of them and all the sudden realize they are running a business, raising a family, finishing grad school, etc. How did that happen? Last I checked you were partying up your 20s?! They had a wake up call, realized they needed to quit drinking and go to bed early. They got so much healthier and freed up so much energy, they ended up with a successful business, family, masters, etc. It was the side effect of their decision to do things that made them feel better in their bodies, day after day. They realized that pleasures of the moment were depleting them slowly, where as arranging their lives so they could get up for sunrise tomorrow was inspiring them to take on the world.
What do you think?
