Today is my birthday, and I am 23 years old. While 23 feels like an insignificant year, I actually believe every year in the twenties holds significance due to all the uncertainty and instability of what can happen next. Much is changing, much is settling and much is growing.
My friends’ lives involve studying for exams, planning weddings, contemplating job switches, travelling, applying for medical or law school, living at home or simply figuring themselves out. Everyone is all over the place. The 20s are weird and beautiful (maybe the beauty comes from the reality that they are so weird).
As I reflect on this past year, which consisted of a whirlwind of changes, meaningful friendships, and the pains and joys of growing up, I grew with awareness of the five important life lessons below.
Birthday reflections: 5 life lessons
Friendship
Good friendship is underrated. This year taught me that people move all over the world for various reasons, whether it’s a job, an itch to travel, family or a partner. When we are discerning where to go or who to be after college, the friendship factor isn’t usually one of the main variables to consider while making a decision. I believe it needs to be.
This year, all the beautiful friendships I have experienced showed me that moving to an area to be close to friends might be one of the best or most valid reasons for a move. Good friendship changes lives. Also, I have learned that a good friendship will always last. I really believe that even if a friend is not present in my current season of life, if they are meant to stay in my life and if I am meant to stay in theirs, the friendship will grow anew again.
Inner rhythms
Life is all about learning its inner rhythms. This year I read An Interrupted Life, a collection of the incredible diaries of Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jewish woman who died during the Holocaust. In it, she says, “Things come and go in a deeper rhythm, and people must be taught to listen; it is the most important thing we have to learn in this life.”
From learning this, inner peace flows, and that peace radiates outward. This year, I have started to learn the rhythm of my life, the seasonality of the here and now. There is a proper season for every stage of life, and resisting that only adds pain (I have resisted, and oh man, how painful it is!).
This year, I am coming to terms with the idea that certain doors being closed, opened or slightly ajar are God’s way of revealing what is meant for this season of life. The first half of the year was a season of savouring the last few precious drops of the friendship and opportunities life at university had to offer. The second half of my year was a season of investing in establishing a healthy parasympathetic/sympathetic balance within my nervous system, enjoying precious community and being OK with boredom.
To compare my life to the stages of farming, a lot of this year has involved a combination of both watering and weeding the seeds and crops in my garden. A few crops were ready for harvest, and those were enjoyed, but many of the crops still needed tending. At times, I watered weeds that needed to be pulled earlier, and failed to water crops when they needed to be watered. But that is all a part of the process of being a farmer—to learn my garden.
In another season, I hope to gain the fruits of a plentiful harvest. But I cannot force these crops to be ready faster than they need to be. The waiting can be painful and requires trust and faith. Learning to love the waiting is part of learning to be OK with the deeper rhythm of life.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is not as black and white as “forgive and forget” or “forgive but never forget.” I’m starting to learn that most things in life are not very black and white. Forgiveness is an essential part of being human, but the process, the act and the reconciliation of forgiving are complicated. I think this is why people write countless books and novels exploring this concept.
I am a long way away from learning how to truly forgive, but this year, I gained an awareness of the choice I have when it comes to forgetting or remembering a memory after I have chosen to forgive. I don’t have to forget everything to fully forgive, and I don’t have to remember everything to fully forgive.
Part of forgiving involves the tender work of keeping certain memories close and releasing the ones that don’t serve me any longer. If I have to let go of a person after forgiving them, part of forgiving is giving myself permission to be OK with letting precious memories continue to serve me—even without the relationship—and giving myself permission to stop the replay of a memory if it no longer serves me.
An underrated part of forgiving is praying for divine intervention to help myself determine which memories to keep and which ones to lay to rest.
Nature
Humans need to stop pretending that we are outside of nature. A dear friend of mine reminded me that we are all composed of the same building blocks as non-human parts of nature.
While I am privileged to be a species with the intellect to ponder this reality, in the end, I am made up of simple molecules such as oxygen, hydrogen and carbon, which are the same elements that make up a houseplant. My humanity is confined to the same materials of the natural world. Not only are we included in nature, we are also dependent on and shaped by the natural world around us.
Who I become is shaped by all my sensory experiences. The intricacy of my neural architecture is formed by my external environment. The reality that I grew up in sunny California with an abundance of palm trees, or that I am sitting in South Bend, Indiana with below freezing weather outside has shaped and is shaping who I am as a person.
The habits I develop ultimately shape the well-being of the other non-human parts of nature. My actions matter for the well-being of not only my houseplant, but for the well-being of the microbes in my gut and the little turtles in the ocean. Humans are just much a part of nature as L. bulgaricus, a golden retriever or a redwood tree. We are all connected.
Rest
Rest, rest, rest. Rest is essential, but it may not feel comfortable if my body’s homeostasis is foreign to rest. I am a person who advocates for people to rest more. To take time to be silent. To chill out. To not feel like our worth comes from achievement or what we do. But knowing that rest is necessary (and that we don’t have to be switched en all the time) might not produce the greatest sensations of pleasure or reward at first.
Resting this year, for me, has created space for boredom. Being bored is one of my least favourite feelings, but being bored is a part of being human. It is OK to sit around trying to figure out what to do. It’s OK to bake with no recipient in mind, and it’s OK to skim through three books and end up not reading any of them.
Now, about seven months down the line from when I first intentionally started to rest, I crave the soft stillness of 8 p.m. I look forward to my boredom that creeps in and motivates me to watercolour, learn how to doodle a tree stump, or write an essay teasing out what beauty means to me.
I needed to get over the early stages of discomfort to learn how to appreciate time to rest. I also have recognized that I am in a space of life where rest is abundant, and I could transition to a place where rest is more scarce. It would be a shame to neglect this precious time of rest.
5 books I read this year that rocked my world:
- An Uninterrupted Life by Etty Hillesum
- How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
- Your Brain on Art by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross
- Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
5 questions that linger as I embrace being 23:
- What is a 401k?
- Why is it that discipline leads to greater freedom?
- How will I be a great auntie for my brand new one-week-old baby niece?
- When am I going to be able to do a pull-up?
- Where are my “islands of peace”? * (*From The Earth Has a Soul: C.G. Jung on Nature, Technology & Modern Life)
As these birthday reflections come to an end, I am eager to experience all the lessons being 23 will bring. A big thank you to all my mentors, friends and family members who have taught me these lessons, were there to learn them with me and ate ice cream with me while I tried to resist learning them.
«LECTURA RELACIONADA» HOUDI: The beloved doll who taught me many lessons about growing up»
imagen 1: Barbara; imagen 2: Sasin Tipchai; imagen 3: SaadiaAMYii; imagen 4: homecare119; image 5: diapicard; image 6: Cim
