I was talking with some college classmates recently when one of them said, "Guys-- we're seniors of adulthood!"
Sadly, it's not the kind of senior that gets us discounted admission to movies and festivals (in fact, now that our student IDs have worn off we're just getting used to paying full admission for the first time). It is to say, if we had started undergrad the year we finished it, we would be "commencing" right about now.
If you ask me, we're still commencing. I'm still learning how to handle myself, and life throws new things at me all the time. I'm always starting something new: moving to new digs, starting work for a new client or in a different position, making new friends, taking ceramics (starting in about two weeks), visiting new places, getting married in the fall... And I know my classmates are moving, having babies, starting new jobs, getting married, starting masters and doctorate degree programs, finishing med school... The range of experiences we've tried our hand at is astonishing. And we have become all too familiar with the flip sides of these things: breaking up, quitting jobs, leaving our home cities.
I'm glad for that; I tend to get bored easily if nothing changes. Comfort is my nemesis. I'm the kind of person that frantically creates tasks when the end of my to-do list comes into view. (I'm working on that...)
What makes it hard to deal with sometimes is that these "new things" I'm taking on seem so ordinary. Like I shouldn't struggle so much to get a handle on them: new work in my same company; a new name for the same relationship. I guess I had hoped, a quarter of the way through my life, to have figured more of this stuff out by now.
That said, my latest task? Give myself a break sometimes!
When friends come to me struggling through a degree, or a rough breakup, or a new job, I don't say, "Stop crying, we've been through this before. You should have this down pat by now."
So why would I hold myself to that unrealistic, harsh, and unhelpful standard? It takes the joy out of the "figuring out," and devalues the amazing progress I have made and what I have accomplished.
Besides that, we can't compare ourselves to each other. We are all different, and wonderfully so. When someone posts an engagement on Facebook, we don't see the mundane aspects of the relationship (i.e. all day, every day), or the relationships that have ended so this one could begin. When someone posts a graduation photo, we don't see the all-nighters and exams; nor do we see the celebratory drinks. And why should we feel worse about ourselves for not finishing med school if we never even wanted to be doctors?
Perhaps hardest for me to face, but most powerful, is that I will make mistakes. Not every life lesson ends with an achievement; many of them are learned by screwing up, by getting lost or, unfortunately, by causing pain to myself or others. It sounds cliche, but I am now learning the reality of this fact more tangibly than ever before.
And it's freeing! Hopefully, the risks we take are calculated, so the messes we make are the kind that can be cleaned up. But if we are always afraid to make them, we will never move from this place, this moment, this state of mind.
It's inevitable: the world changes; we change; relationships and situations change. The years pass, and we move and we learn and we come and go from each other's lives, and maybe come back again...
I, for one, am always working toward something, always building something. I am writing again because those "baby steps" never get bigger. Every day is another set of (sometimes frustratingly tiny, sometimes victorious) baby steps. It's a theme and a mantra in so many areas of my life, and I need the reminder to find joy in the figuring-out. I don't want to take these steps in isolation. I want to document them, work through them, share them.
And I miss the conversations that have sprung up around this space over the years. I write for myself, but I also write for us, for the world. Always moving, always turning.
I hope you'll join me for another set.
<3
