5 lessons I’ve learned in 46 years

4 May, 2023

Yesterday was my 46th birthday and so I have officially started my 46th year. It feels nice. I have made it here soundly with a little grace and a lot of grit. I am proud to be here. And I quite like the view. I’ve been thinking about the lessons I’ve learned in 46 years.

Often I’ve noticed, as my birthday nears, my mind starts to make more time to digest the things that I might have normally just let pass me. The slickness of my ever increasingly more stoic brain, grows suddenly porous and I welcome and entertain thoughts and feelings that I normally wouldn’t take the time for. Unexpectedly unarmed, I feel things freshly, the way I did when I was younger. And so, after a month or so of looking directly at the emotions that I would normally have gracelessly swatted away, I’ve had time to think of the gifts of understanding that the beginning of my 46th year has allotted me. So, here are my own personal ‘chosen gems’ that I have gleaned on this adventure through life as yet…

1) Taking your time to figure things out on your own is powerful

It’s easy and enticing to go to people that you love with questions you have about your life. It feels good to tell your story and to ask what others think. We deserve an outlet and sometimes an audience. But if we can’t digest our own experiences and decide what we feel seems right about our lives, we will perpetually be floating, untethered, lost and uncertain.

Constantly looking to attach ourselves to the opinions of others in our effort to find what seem like the right answer is depleting. And so, when I feel the need to tell my story, and to experience the reaction of my kind audience, I go a bit deeper. And I let myself digest my own experiences. There is a healthy and balanced way to navigate my own life. And it does not always involve an audience or a search for someone else’s opinion. Take a small step into yourself. Decide how you feel about your life and what is going on. There is nothing wrong with sharing. There is also nothing wrong with cultivating your own opinions and ideas, and having confidence within them.

2) The harder (and longer) the effort, the more amazing the reward

Some things take months or years of daily hard work. Usually within these really big endeavors, there will be periods when it feels like you’re getting nowhere. And that it might just be a waste of your time to be giving so much of yourself to something that seems so precarious. It feels lonely. And the uncertainty can be a weight like no other.

But, if you believe in what you’re doing, the effort may just be worth the reward. And with that final success, every single second of work sings in a heart wrenching chorus of your own astounding effort. And every grueling hour that you put in when you thought you were getting nowhere, radiates into your soul. Follow the paths of challenge that entices and beckon you. Hold fast, and believe in yourself. As long as you are moving, the direction is irrelevant. You’ll get to where you need to be.

3) Anti-ageing products/procedures are at their core against me and so I am at my core against them

The anti-ageing market tells me that I should hide my age induced, or ‘unattractive’ bits. And I tell them, I love everything that they think I should hate. I have wrinkles, age spots, white hairs, sagging, sallow, unplump skin, and I love it all. Every unattractive or unpalatable aspect of my ageing body and mind is my own weather worn treasure. I earned my disheveled beauty, and I choose to let it shine. Regardless of what it is that our society ( or our relatives, or ‘friends’) are telling us about it, I stand behind the conviction of my loveliness at every age.

At my best, I am positive that I am astounding. And at my worse, I fear my imperfections are being judged. The people who want to sell me the anti-ageing stuff; their purpose, personality and greatest desire is to provoke and strengthen that insecurity in me. They cultivate it and nurture it. And so, I won’t spend any of my time or money on those people or their ad campaigns. I am particular with my money, and with my people. They don’t make the cut. I deserve the age that I have been gifted. And I deserve to love what it has created in me. And so, I will wear my years proudly like the treasured gift that they are.

I’ll keep that money for inspirations and endeavors. Not concern about my marionette lines and silver wispy hairs, grown from a life of challenge and stories that I am proud of.

4) Family by blood is a coincidence at best (true family is always who you choose it to be)

Another of the lessons I’ve learned in 46 years is that your true family is always your own choice. Getting confused and entangled by a perception or an idea of what biological family is supposed to offer us is one of the biggest corroders of ease and happiness that I have come across as yet.

The pain that I have witnessed countless people experience, as they continue to try to squeeze someone who has incessantly and constantly broken their heart, into the role of their family, has broken my own heart as the witness. I have experienced it first hand as well. And I truly believe that if someone doesn’t suit you, if someone is unkind, or cruel, or thoughtless, it doesn’t matter if you have the same blood, or if you lived together when you were young, or have visited them on holidays.

If people don’t have your best intentions at their forefront, they don’t need to be deemed your family. Also, if you love someone but don’t share that long history, or bloodline, if they love you, and accept you as family, they are family. If someone is cruel, or thoughtless, let them go. And perhaps this quote might help:

“If you love something, set it free; if it comes back it’s yours, if it doesn’t, it never was.” -Richard Bach

I truly believe that family is always who you choose it to be. And that the sooner you embrace that truth, the more time and tears you may just save.

5) Don’t let the winds of their unkindness sway or change you

Another of the lessons I’ve learned in 46 years, and one that I continue to learn, is not to let unkindness of others sway me off course. As a sensitive soul, and as someone who has been hurt to my core by the rudeness of a random stranger, when people are mean or unkind, I’ve learned a few things that help. It’s not necessary or helpful to hold onto the hurt, or to act or respond with unkindness. Let them go. And go back to you. Come back to the things that matter to you. The unkindness is unimportant. It’s not worth your rumination or your frustration.

If you put kindness into the world and someone is rude back to you, you can let that energy go back to them, by not picking it up. It is for them, they created it, it belongs to them –so leave it there. Don’t take it in. Don’t respond with an offended or snarky response. If they are effectively switching on the light of unkindness, save the power by turning it right back off. You don’t have to react with rudeness, or hurt, or agitation… just leave it. Leave it with them. And carry on with your kindness and your day. Don’t let yourself be drained by their ineffective and miserable decision. Life is beautiful, regardless of their choices. Remember and revel in kind people. Give them kindness back. They are everywhere but somehow, often get forgotten or looked past.

If we water the flowers, and leave the weeds, things will change.

Conclusion

The lessons I’ve learned in 46 years have been plentiful. But the core is simple. Life is here for us to enjoy and to be impassioned by. And when I am lost or sad, I need only remind myself how wonderful it is to have this life, with the people I love, with so much beauty, so much to try out, and so much to be part of. I am blessed.

Thanks so much for your support,

Lyndsay

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