A mix of emotions - Getting older

(Sad) songs, the passing of time, the joy friends bring and self-care moments

Feb 26, 2023

My birthday is coming up and I have mixed feelings. I am happy and bubbly and excited. I want to jump up and down, throw this bigger than big party and invite everyone I know. I also want to lie down, close my eyes, put my noise cancelling headphones on and listen to this song on repeat:

I listen to this song that’s about heartbreak and missing someone. But it makes me feel at peace, an intimate little nook I can inhabit where nothing ever happens. Time stops when you’re inside, it’s a safe space.

I keep oscillating between these two moods:

Big and noisy, small and quiet.

I have no idea what it means, I just wish I could find a better balance.

I guess I want balance because there is so much doubt in life. People who tell you how they think you should look, others who keep making you believe you’re not good enough for your job or your studies, social media planting the seeds of a million insecurities we hadn’t even begun to think about…. If millennials are the burnout generation, gen z must be imposter syndrome generation, fuelled by self-doubt and driven by a desire to exceed expectations too high to be surpassed without mental and or physical health deprivation. Can’t we just accept that we don’t have to be better than the ones who came before us? We’re not a software that has new releases with bug improvements every week, we’re humans, we have the right to mess up and stumble over the same stone more than once. It’s not about giving up altogether and accept our flawed nature, it’s more about realising that striving for perfection through constant betterment will never allow us to believe we’re good enough. If something is good enough, you don’t start looking at all the improvements you could make. Constant improvement as a motto feels a bit like consumerism for personality, like you could go to a shop and decide what traits you’d like to purchase as add-ons to your existing personality such as kindness or mindfulness, or buy a product to erase all the things you don’t like about yourself like being late, forgetting people’s birthdays or having to set up five alarms in the morning to get out of bed because you keep hitting snooze.

This thinking has permeated our culture unexpectedly deep. Nowadays applying for anything (be it a job, university or even adoption of a child) is like buying a backpack. I want it to be big, to have more than 4 different compartments, it has to be light, it’s better if it’s machine washable and I want it to look good. That could loosely translate to: in order to apply for this program, you need to have a degree in science with an average grade above 70%, knowledge in intermediate and advanced concepts of all stem majors, 4 recommendation letters, a motivational essay, take this test we’re proposing and do an interview with different interviewers where you convince them why you’re right for this position and not the next person who had a better grade on their degree but a worse one on the test. What do I know? Am I actually a better fit for the program? I don’t know, maybe yes maybe no. Is anyone ever a better fit than others? Does it matter how much I think I want this or is it just about how well I can sell myself with my grades and wonderful recommendations?

But not only that. Take dating apps as another example. Swiping left and right and choosing our potential partner based on a couple of pictures and a text people write to impress others into clinking yes and hopefully sending them a message first. Let’s not forget we’re talking partners here, people we want to spend our time with. Do we really have to make a list of the things we want and check all boxes before swiping right? What happened to meeting someone so different you’re actually surprised and then interested…

The older I get the more I realise I just want to live my life and be myself. I don’t want to impress anyone, listen to everyone’s opinion on how they think I might be better. I don’t care if you think I’m too thin to too fat, I should work less and study more, eat meat instead of tofu, have a boyfriend but never a girlfriend, or call my parents more often. It’s my life, you have one of your own where you can make your choices. Four words: mind your own business. And yes, I will keep asking the people who are important to me for their opinions, I’m human and not completely immune to the need of external validation, but that does not mean I want your *unsolicited advice*. I know everyone is the protagonist of their own life and expressing your opinion of someone feels like giving advice to a secondary character, harmless to their mental health and beneficial to them, but it’s oftentimes really not. And since we don’t always know exactly what everyone else is going through and what their reasons and motivations and struggles are, I personally think it’s better to be kind or to just shut up. I know it’s such a big cliché, but I’m leaving it here in case some people who really need to hear this piece of unsolicited advice come across this newsletter. I guess it’s not unsolicited if you choose to read it.

Here is a poem by Bukowski to illustrate my point:

The Laughing Heart

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.

it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight in you.

by Charles Bukowski

Fast froward a week and here we are, my birthday has passed, and I have celebrated it. Not with the enormous party I impulsively wanted to throw, but with the family that are my friends. They are the best, I love my friends so much, but that’s another story that deserves an entire newsletter. Let’s leave at this: I’m tremendously lucky to have them. Look for friends like mine, they make all the difference. Surrounding yourself with people who make you feel good is one of the key steps to finding that balance I wrote about before. It’s easy to accept we are inevitably getting older when your entourage celebrates you.

Lorde writes in this song about how getting old is scary, which is something I think we all have felt at some point. I think the scariest thing isn’t the actual getting older but time passing at hypersonic speed. It still feels unreal to me at times how slow time seems to go by when I am living in a moment but how fast the last years have gone by. To think that Covid started in 2020 and now it’s already 2023. Three years have gone by, and I still sometimes feel like it was yesterday that we were all stuck at home actually trying to learn the hobbies we’d always said we would and catching up with friends and family over video calls. Three years, where did the time go? I don’t know, but I do have a phone gallery full of pictures and a library of memories stored in my brain that happened during these past three years. It is scary but maybe not so much when we think about all the things we’ve done, the people we’ve met, the places we’ve seen, books we’ve read, the conversations we’ve had… Freezing time doesn’t make room for new experiences, so here is a toast to time passing and to getting older next to the people we hold dear, to new experiences with familiar faces. Have I said how much I love my friends? Ok, shutting up now ;).

Time is a great tool, and we seem to focus a lot on the quality time we spend with others but not the one we spend alone, with ourselves. A self-care day, or even a moment, is a concept I used to preach more than I actually practise. I’m trying to change that. Very rewarding experience, 10/10 would recommend to a friend. But, seriously, spending time alone is one of the best ways to learn more about oneself, to check in, balance out the discrepancy of the idea we have of ourselves and the idea others have of us. Introspecting, thinking, is a fantastic exercise. I’m not saying everyone has to start sitting in front of an empty wall and start questioning the meaning of their life, but maybe after reading a book or even watching a particularly inspiring piece of cinema/television it is worth it to stop and explore how we do or don’t relate to the story, the characters, their dynamics… Journaling is also great, or even just thinking while taking a bath (or showering - the more ecological alternative). Thinking about what we want, why we want it and how we are going to try to achieve it. Thinking about everything we’re grateful for, what makes us happy. Examining what has made us feel uneasy lately (or way back) and why and if there is anything we can do to avoid that, or even just sitting in the discomfort. Feeling all the feelings sometimes, really letting go. Crying to liberate the pent-up tension or laughing our heart out. Meditating to reset the mind and bring the body to a more relaxed state. Anything - it’s up to you how you want to do it.

It feels especially important spending time alone in this new age. The other day a friend casually commented on how she never went alone to restaurants because she felt uneasy. It hit very close to home. I had to eat alone in a restaurant a couple of weeks ago and I was so anxious before I went there and when I first sat down. I got a couple of wondering looks from the other people eating. I was the only one without company. It felt so strange asking for a table for one, I kept fidgeting and looking at my phone while I waited for my food to arrive. The white background noise felt more like a deafening silence than an opportunity to eavesdrop on someone’s intriguing conversation. When the food did arrive, though, something sort of magical happened: for the first time in a while, I actually tasted my food, like reeeaaally tasted it. I remember every bite, every flavour, every texture. Admittedly, it was an excellent meal, unforgettable if I dare say so, but mostly because I had no one to talk to and “distract” me from the culinary experience with casual conversation. Don’t get me wrong, I love conversing, but this was an utterly different experience, I was pleasantly surprised, it was delightful. Since we are already on the topic of food, let’s raise a glass again, this time to spending quality time with ourselves and all the wonderful experiences it brings.

Circling back to time, age, and my birthday… What have we learnt in this newsletter? (A comprehensive guide with songs)

1. That sad (French) songs are a place of comfort.

2. That we’re good enough and don’t need to strive for constant self-improvement Irgendwann glücklich by Haller -