"I am everything I never thought I'd be and disapproved of in others. Someone tell me that's a positive thing."To which I replied:
"i have to say i am feeling the EXACT same way. and i think it has so much to do with what a commenter said above, caring about who you are and scrutinizing yourself harder than before. or finally being mature enough to handle facing the things you want to improve about yourself. we spend a lot of our 20's and 30's thinking the problem is the other guy. somewhere right about now, i think we start getting real and seeing we may indeed actually have bad traits we want to fix. i am trying to learn to rise above simply stopping there and being harsh on myself and trying to find my way to problem solving those things...that is the hardest part for me, not condemning myself so harshly. so maybe you're there too and we just need to keep aging and finding our way through. i think it's something akin to taking a rough gemstone and grinding, cutting, polishing it to a beautifully cut jewel. i am sure if the jewel had anything to say, it would say that the process of refining hurt like hell."And then I realized I maybe a lot of people who are 40-ish might be feeling something similar. So this is my call for submissions. I'd like to open a conversation around this. Ladies, gentlemen...any advice? Anything similar going on for you? How do you think you might go about solving it? Anyone beyond their 40's who's "been there, done that" have any words of wisdom for us?
If so, please consider sharing your thoughts or struggles in the comments below. Maybe something good can come of sharing and witnessing with others around the world who collectively are going through it too.
blessings to you and yours!
~hipmama
And p.s. new visitors, please disregard my swearing post at Google below as well as the lack of any photos on this blog (refraining from swearing at Google one more time, because case in point, I really was the dodo who didn't read the fine print!).
Interesting theme! I'm not quite 40-something yet, but I've always been precocious, so I'll post anyway....
ReplyDeleteI don't really share the original sentiment; who I am now is pretty consistent with who I have always been. Then again, maybe that's because there's something of a *lack* of consistency... I've always been a dilletante! But, while I can reach waaaaaay back to my childhood and grin at the naivete of my conceptions, I don't cringe or shake my head at them; they were on the same track, just uninformed.
So the idea of refining, yes. That's what it's been: a constant grind to go from the "what" to the "how." To know I want to change the world so it's more like X, but learning that means I have to do Y and sometimes Z to make it happen.
It probably helps that I've been in therapy for 10 years, grinding away professionally at all the messed up gunk that was caked onto me in my childhood. I can look back five or seven or 10 years and say WOW, look what I've accomplished! which is a great feeling. (It's not so great a feeling to look at how much more I have left to address, but there's some hope I'll get there, at least.)
I check in constantly on that moral compass, that overall plan, that set of guiding principles that make up the "me" I think I am. And I'm somewhat surprised, and generally satisfied, to find out how consistent it's been. Which isn't to say I don't surprise myself... but even when my impression of what I will do or experience hares off in a direction I never would have predicted, I find that it's still consistent with the underlying "plan," just like if I was a cylon or something.
For example: I always knew I'd nurse my baby. That wasn't even a question; that's "what you do." What I *didn't* know until I was pregnant was that some people nursed for YEARS, and what I didn't know until about the 34th week of pregnancy, during my birthing class, was that the AAP's *minimum* recommendation was a whole year. That was at least twice as long as I'd envisioned myself nursing. But, okay... I committed to it, right then and there: at least a year, and then "we'll see."
By a year, DS1 was allergic to wheat, and we were discovering dairy too. And I now knew the WHO's minimum recommendation was two years. So my minimum was revised upward, and then "we'll see." But three years was the MAX; we wanted another child, and I didn't want to deal with the possibility that I'd have nursing aversion during pregnancy.
And then we started getting close to that three-year mark, and it just seemed so much *harder* to wean than to deal with nursing during pregnancy. So we conceived DS2, DS1 kept nursing, and I tandemed for 14 months before weaning DS1 on his fifth birthday.
So, long-term (or "biologically normal" or whatever you want to call it) nurser was not something I'd ever thought I'd be. But following my instincts? Giving my child what he's programmed by evolution to expect, need, want? Doing what's right for my family regardless of what "society" might think? Yeah, all that checks out.
It may be that those who are surprised at "who they are" are in the same boat... the superficialities are strikingly different, but the only thing that's *really* changed is the understanding of the route from point A to point B. The destination has always been the same.
Thanks Ironica for sharing your point of view. I turned 40 about 9 months ago and I have to say, something has shifted for me in self-perception that may or may not happen for you and may or may not have to do with 40, but that's why I put the age down (since so many people I know IRL are circa 40).
ReplyDeleteI totally get the evolution of ideas/philosophies that you described so well. I could say I'm a lot like that too, or have been. But, and I never would have said this about myself before now, I have been extremely hard on myself and owning up to a lot of my own issues/faults lately, more so than ever before. It's strong enough for me to wonder if maybe it's a "next chapter" thing. I was starting to think its had something to do with having been a single mom for nearly 9 years...but my friend, the original post writer, she doesn't have kids. So then I looked for other commonalities, which was our age.
Who knows, really! In any event, thanks so much for posting and sharing your story!!
~hipmama
My comment posted to FB spurred more from having one of those "I can't believe I'm here" moments than having a "who am I" moment. Laura found a good description in "refine." Most people that know me could say I'm quite the same as I ever was, but very different, too. Aren't we all? That is why refine fits so nicely. Something of me was always there & always will be there, but it's hopefully more polished now.
ReplyDeleteI always thought it quite naive to ever make the comment "I didn't think it could happen to me." Seriously? You didn't? Isn't that what EVERYONE says when that "thing" happens to them? That statement never made sense to me... maybe until today. Still, it seems more accurate to say "This isn't the thing I thought would happen."
I was the firmly grounded, overly realistic, super logical one. I fully expected something to happen one day that caught me off guard, and I wanted to be ready for it! lol Too many times in my life I heard the word "judgmental." I thought I was discerning. I thought it was a gift. I thought it was ok to say something was wrong - black or white. I didn't think I was judgmental because I didn't judge the person, only the action. I sympathized with people in those impossible situations, and hoped my strong convictions would reinforce me if ever I was faced with them.
Well, I've faced them. THAT's what took time. I'm not so sure it was some clock going off in me at 40 more than it was life changing around me in ways I'd never experienced. Live long enough & you'll see everything.
I faced them, and, according to my estimation of good and bad choices, I didn't succeed. Can't say I failed - just didn't succeed. Those unexpected things happened to me, and what I'm realizing is that no amount of preparation prepares you for some of it. The "right choices" are hardly ever easily seen. That's where I was naive - thinking the choices would be clearer and easier. I found/find myself not being strong under pressure. I find myself giving in to the struggle - the thing I "disapproved of" in others.
I can't fully flesh out why I added "someone tell me this is a good thing." I think it has something to do with being able to acknowledge progress. All in all, I believe I have walked in the proverbial someone else's shoes. It will hopefully make me more aware of the complexities of each and every challenge in the vastly different lives we live.... and hopefully, with a little help from my friends, I will realize that other's are not judging me, either.