So I turned 30
and I feel exactly the same *SURPRIIIIISE*
Hellooo, my wonderful people. Another (2) week(s), another issue. I honestly miss writing this during my off-week, but then again I obviously cannot sustain this on a weekly basis for now because here I am at 11:18 am on a Saturday morning sitting in bed racing to write this before heading out to a family lunch while watching Somebody feed Phil Season 6. I know, I need better planning and time management, but we’ll tackle this some other time.
Anyways… so I turned 30 exactly ten days ago now! and I feel the same *gasps*. I mean I’m suddenly hyper aware of the fact that my age now has a 3 instead of the 2 as a first digit, but then again I’d been fixated on the fact that this number was fast approaching for the past three years.
I know I touched on this in the first issue, but for a really long time now I’d been dreading turning 30. When I was a teenager, I’d never given getting older a second thought and I never pegged myself as someone who’d have a fear thereof and scrambling to try and stop time. On the contrary, I’d always looked forward to being older - but then again I think we all are like that as teenagers, wanting to be older and seem and look more “adult-like,” thinking in our little naive brains that this is the cool thing to be. Little did we know…
As a kid, I was around my great-grandparents a lot (blame it on my grandma and mum having kids at a very young age). Contrary to my mum and grandma, my great-grandmother has always been the one looking to stop and reverse time which was something that was always “lovingly” criticized by the family because “why would you want to look younger?” and “every age is beautiful in its own way” and “you’re a grandmother, you shouldn’t be worrying about how you look that much.”
Growing up, I equally lived through these two narratives. Between my great-grandmother’s love for youth and trying to find the elixir of life to live longer and try and look younger for longer (after all I think I inherited my love for skincare from her) and between the rest of the family’s views that this is frivolous and you can’t possibly turn back the clock.
Sidenote: here’s a great page for skincare tips, if you’re interested- which I highly recommend you start being interested in because self-care (no presh!)
Fast-forward an odd 20-something years from that point in my life, and I find myself in a similar position. Instead of being ridiculed by others, I’m wholly taking on that role myself. Hello, my brain, my worst enemy and biggest critic.
The first thing that I looked at in the photo up-top were my wrinkles. The minute I saw the image, I went “OMG do I have more wrinkles around my eyes now compared to last week? Hellooo, 30!” And that, my dear friends, I have to say is absolute crap! (excuse my French) I’ve totally had these wrinkles for at least the past 2-3 years and they haven’t just magically increased in a fortnight.
What I realized when I took a step back, took a deep breath in and told my mind to just calm the f*** down is that I was entering my 30s the same way some people were entering the new millennial thinking that the world is going to collapse and that we’ve reached the end of the world. I’m so hung up on the fact that I’m labelling myself by a number which could or could not mean something, depending on how you see it.
I think my fear of being 30 (and I apologize to all of you who have heard me say this before) comes from my feeling that I haven’t lived my life, my youth and my childhood fully. I don’t want to make it seem that I had a miserable childhood and adolescence, on the contrary. It was great in its own right and I’m very grateful for it. But I’ve always been the mature, grounded child and teenager. I never did whatever crazy carefree teenagers were doing, I was always the sound of reason. And I can’t say that I enjoyed this role most of the time, but I just couldn’t help it. Something (my subconscious most probably) was always holding me back from letting go and going crazy.
Now, this circles back to the whole identity question again. Is this truly who I am? And that is the crux of my fear of aging and especially leaving the carefree, younger more naive 20s because 1. Did I live and be carefree enough? 2. Have I even learned enough during those fateful years to make me a better, more well-rounded, fun-loving, unapologetically-me person now?
Mindfulness and presence
And I just had a revelation while writing this now: it seems like I have chronic FOMO. And here I thought that I was a JOMO kind of person.
But this makes sense because for the longest time now, I’ve been someone driven by fear. Fear has been taking the role of bouncer to any new event, challenge, feeling etc. that has entered my life for the past 7 years at least. Even moments of happiness would be clouded by fear. Fear be like: “Oh nope, you’re not entering the club today. We don’t let happiness in here, come back when you’re dressed in more misery.”
I was watching Brene Brown’s The Call to Courage (highly recommend it) a week ago and she was talking about exactly that. She said:
“There is no emotion harder to feel than joy because we are so afraid that it won’t last.”
We can’t fathom to allow ourselves to feel happiness for too long because our brains automatically go “Ohhh, you’re going to pay for this,” as if the universe is always out to get us. Our brain won’t just allow us to live in the present moment and enjoy it because when you think about it, that’s when you truly stop time. It’s truly living the moment and feeling this hyper presence. In that same talk by Brown, she mentioned that her daughter often pauses during special occasions to take a mental image of this particular moment in time and take in all the details, the feelings, everything. And that is brilliant. Holding on to how a moment made you feel and how it was set up is something that you can always have with you and revisit any time, anywhere.
So, to keep it short and sweet, here are three things that I’ve set the intention to be more mindful of in my 30s:
Age is but a number is a very common phrase, and yeah sure, it’s great and valid and all, but age is also experience and wisdom and ups and downs and phases and never-ending learning and (hopefully) growth. And that is actually a wealth that we take for granted. Take stock of it, be mindful of it, relish it and own it.
Catch myself when I’m moving out of fear and replace it with a different emotion, like hope or curiosity or that feeling of “what will you lose if you give it a shot”. I’d say love, but that’s a big commitment for me. I don’t think it’s always that easy to just love whatever “challenging” situation you’re in that’s causing this fear, even if it’s rooted in love. It boils down to breaking the emotion down and taking it one step at a time, which - if you think about it- is essentially the same as going through life.
Being less apologetic for who I am as a person. That’s not to say that I don’t have a lot of working on myself to do and a lot more growing to do. I’ve still got a long way to go, but there are some personality traits that I have that may seem like weaknesses just because they’re different than the norm or what’s expected of me. So instead of beating myself up about being different or not living up to other’s expectations, I’m going to work on being more comfortable with these traits and turn them into strengths.
Bonus point: start doing face yoga and using my guasha more because I’m not happy with these wrinkles ( JK, but not really).
And with that being said, I leave you with this reel of three cute kids living it up and showing us all how it should be done. And also this awesome lady who’s taken jingling to Jingle Bells to a whole new level.
Until next time, my friends. Sending you lots of love and hugs xoxo..