There's a theme that's been coming up in an awful lot of my conversations with friends lately: the idea that the things we're doing at present in our lives are somehow tantamount to 'finding' ourselves, or 'becoming' whatever it is that will enable us to live our most authentic lives.
In other words, we're all having Fabulous Midlife Crises.
Right?
I mean, what else could this be?
Who were we all our lives that we now need to do all this evolving?
How is our present experience any more valid than what came before?
And why are we so sure that everything we're changing up is resulting in improvement, as if we've suddenly become all smarty-pants and Yoda-like in our middle age?
Admittedly, hindsight sometimes makes it clear that the 'good old days' weren't quite that. Prom photos are an excellent case in point.
Where to even begin? The hair? The dress? The guy I cut out of the picture? I don't want to go back to any of it, yet clearly I once thought this was all a good idea. It's hard to look back at that with anything other than gratitude -- the kind accompanied by snorting laughter -- for having outgrown the moment.
Growth, we figure, is the goal of life -- at least, for those of us with a knee-jerk tendency to analyze this stuff, searching for said goal. We're always working some to-do list aimed not just at improvement -- lose 5 lbs., get that better job, that better relationship -- but at getting it all done. Crossing items off the bucket list.
The big cosmic joke, of course, is that life doesn't work that way. We never get it all done. And when we're done, well, we're done. Finis. Somehow I doubt we sit around in the afterlife going, "Well, sure, I kicked the bucket fifteen years earlier than I'd hoped, and that cancer, that was really a bitch - but did you see me in that casket? I'd finally made my goal weight."
Really, what is it we are thinking with all this searching and finding and becoming? What are we trying to accomplish?
The other day I came across the Ted Talk The Psychology of Your Future Self, in which Dan Gilbert discusses the fallacy "that we have just recently become the people that we are meant to be, and will always be for the rest of our lives."
Gilbert's talk centers on how the only constant in life is change. And yet we humans are so resistant to change! We're okay, for the most part, with the pleasant changes we choose -- a new house or car, maybe -- but we dig in deep against the losses. Divorce is so common that more than half the population suffers it now, and death is inevitable for all of us, yet we rail against these realities as if they are injustices.
But our lists. Our plans. Our growth and personal evolution.
These things reassure us about the role change plays in our lives. They give us markers we can look at and say, "Well, yes, there was this horrible thing I endured...but look how much stronger I am for it! How much better!" And it's not that this is invalid or unhelpful -- but the irony is that we often fare best when we roll along without attempting to wrest every ache and injustice into a lesson.
(She said whilst blogging about the lessons in all this... Wink, wink...)
I recently took a road trip, traveling cross-country to a new home. On the drive, I didn't lament the ongoing change in scenery. And sure, to some extent maybe that's because I was aware the ever-changing vistas flying past meant I was, in fact, making progress on my goal of traveling cross-country to a new home.
But as anyone who's undertaken a road trip knows, there are countless moments when the destination as a concept disappears. It becomes all about the journey. There's a timelessness in travel, even if it's fleeting. There may be schedules and itineraries to keep, but we're removed from our day to day routine.
And sometimes, that's just enough to remove us from our worries about where we've been and where we're headed and whether or not we'll be good enough when we get there.
I might like to disown her, but that girl in the teal prom dress and lamentably matching eyeliner is no less 'me' than the person I am now. She's got less experience, for sure, and questionable taste on a variety of fronts. I might like to sit her down for a stern talking-to about a few things.
But in the end, the only advice I'd give her is this: cut yourself some slack, breathe deeply, and live in the moment.
The plans and goals are great, but true joy and beauty and grace will surprise you in the oddest, least-orchestrated moments.
Laughing with strangers in a slow line at the market. Feeling the ground beneath your feet on a trail run, lungs burning, heart soaring, solitude complete. Dissolving, half asleep, under a gentle touch. Being silly and weird with your silly, weird friends. Being vulnerable when you'd rather flee. Counting the last breaths of a dog you adore. Feeling the knife's edge of pain, then realizing, one day, that you feel it no more. Realizing, another day, that you'll feel it again. And again you'll move on. And again you'll be okay, and then not okay, and ever changing, and maybe -- or maybe not -- improving.
Certainly, there's no harm in working to better ourselves, our health, our relationships with others. Much good can come of introspection and hard work; I don't mean to discredit that, and I intend to continue doing all I can to be my personal best.
But I also intend to just be still and breathe in the moment more often. If our hearts are in the right place, I think we need not 'find' or 'become' so feverishly. We do just fine without all the lists and expectations.
Maybe even better, because we realize that who we are, imperfect but alive, is in that very moment good enough.