A friend just had a birthday and started a discussion about it. That discussion was more about gifts, and I may write about that some day, but this will be more about experiences.
For many years birthdays were frustrating because there would be a feeling of something that I would want, but I either couldn't quite figure it out, or I was too busy to make it happen. Things started changing around 40.
I wanted to do something cool for 39; that's the last good age right? I wanted to do something special for 29 too, though I don't think it really happened. Sometimes I would go out, or sometime people would arrange dinner in a restaurant with lots of people.
Those dinners are the most common solution, and we have arranged them for people ourselves, but you get trapped by whomever you sit by, and often the main social group leaves out some people you love and includes some people you can't stand, and sometimes gets other people who don't do well together seated next to each other. There is one year I still feel bad about for one friend. Based on how well she knew the others, she should have been next to me, and instead she was next to someone who really looked down on her.
40 was different because I decided that I had been meaning for a long time to get back to Playa Del Carmen, and I was just going to go for it. I planned to be there on my birthday, and I ended up going the week after, but it was enough. I decided something and made it happen, despite pneumonia the month before that used up all my sick time.
There were other things that happened at 40. One was that I set goals in three areas for things I wanted to do at 50. They were long range goals, so that I would need to be working at them over the course of the next decade, but basically they are that at 50 I will have been on all of the six main continents and go to Antarctica, I will do a triathlon, and I will make a movie.
Other things started happening too, with music and with the associations that I started to make, where a lot has been changing and going on, and that led to other things, though it has been gradual.
I got the idea that for 41 I wanted to have a karaoke party, and I wasn't sure whether to invite school friends or work friends or church friends, and I ended up inviting everyone from Twitter, and it felt like the right thing to do, and there were lessons in it, but I did not understand why until after.
For 42 it didn't feel right to plan anything, so I joined a friend's plan, who has the same birthday. I realized that I had people I wanted to see, but it didn't have to be for my birthday, and I started trying to make more of a point of staying in touch with the people I care about and enjoy spending time with. That has happened via email, cards, phone calls, and visits, but that is still something that is expanding. Just a couple of weeks ago I got an idea for what I think will commemorate my 43rd birthday.
Ultimately, the last few birthdays have been satisfying, and I think that is because life has been satisfying. It is still often hard and hectic, but it is also very good. Maybe it was the goals that I set at 40.
I would like to say that it was the start of living more deliberately, but that would not adequately express how much things come to me and they surprise me but I follow them. Maybe it is more accurate to say that I am living consciously. I am aware of the needs of the moment, and I respond to those, but there is also a bigger picture. There has been more creativity, and more acceptance, and more peace.
The timeline is not playing out like I thought it would at 40. I would have expected to be experimenting with filming techniques, and to have visited South America by now, and to be more fit.
Instead I have written some things that were good learning experiences, and started drawing, which will have its own impact on my cinematography. I have been to Italy and am planning another trip to Italy, even though Europe was one of the continents I already had down. And, while I am still exercising fairly regularly, and getting better about whole grains and vegetables, not only because I have started a garden, I am still not appreciably better at running, cycling, or swimming. Also, I have no idea how it fits in, but I have a bass guitar now.
Right now I am nearing the end of a project of reading and writing exercises that has been very long. I am at times frustrated that I am not moving more quickly, but I have learned so much already. When I am writing there are some answers that I know that even a few months ago, I would not have been able to say that. As soon as I finish it there will be other projects, but they are leading me to be the person I need to be, and I will be able to do what I need to do. I could not have predicted the trajectory, because other things needed to happen first, but there is a logical order.
That's why life is good. There is learning and there is growth. I am tired a lot, but never bored. I am often off-balance, and trying to do things that I am not at all good at, but that keeps me feeling young. My body is not young, but my mind is.
So my birthdays have been about relationships and experiences, but that's what my life has been about too, and it's working out.
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