I might only be 27, but I have already been lectured about eye creams and asked a million times what I will do with my life as though time is running out. Your twenties are supposed to be your young and vital years and I feel them slipping through my fingers like a leaking faucet. Not only that, but my hair is already turning gray, which everyone keeps telling me comes from stress. Don't they realize that telling me that just gives me one more thing to stress out about?
Last weekend we experienced the wrath of hurricane Irene. Leading up to the storm I was a little concerned, but also somewhat excited. I was collecting candles from all different corners of my apartment and filtering water into bottles just in case we couldn’t drink the tap water. I wasn’t worried enough to fill the bathtub with water, which was fine because the storm didn’t even take out the power to my little apartment in New York. To be honest, I was a tiny bit disappointed that I didn’t get an excuse to light all the candles and read by candlelight and prepare different foods and snuggle up to my boyfriend as though we were camping. But I did enjoy falling asleep on the futon listening to the swooshing of the wind and the rain rapping on my windowpane. I also appreciate that my family and loved ones were all safe and that the storm didn’t do as much damage as some people thought it might. Anyway, to get to the point, since I had power and nothing better to do (or anything to stress about since I was just enjoying listening to the storm), I watched a documentary about stress. Did you know that your stress level could be directly correlated to your position in your social hierarchy? For many of us this relates to our job. Scientists studied baboons first, measuring stress hormones in blood samples from baboons at different levels of their social hierarchy. Then, a study was done with government workers in England and the results were that the lower your place on the pecking order, the higher your stress levels would be. It has something to do with the level of control you have and the level of fulfillment that you experience. Which means that you can compensate for a lower place in the work hierarchy if your true priority in life is being involved in some activity outside of work where you excel or take a higher position. It got me thinking that the stresses that I attribute to specific daily life afflictions in reality have a deeper root, which is the lack of direction that I have been experiencing and ultimately the stress that I am going to miss the deadline to figure out what I want to do in life and fail.
Finally, I realized that I am in control of this viewpoint. I am the one who at some naïve point in my life thought that I could, would, and wanted to have my career settled, a husband, and a child by the time I am thirty. Maybe some people succeed in doing that. I have a friend that found out what she wants to do with her life and went back to school, planned a wedding, and bought a condo all in the last year, and she’s a few months younger than I am. I am tremendously happy for her (and maybe feeling a tinge of jealousy that I do not possess the superpowers that she must have to balance all of those things and still be one of the happiest and most relaxed people that I know) but I now recognize that each person’s path is unique. Well, I knew that, but what I did finally learn is that just because you are not ahead of everyone else in doing something doesn’t mean that you’re falling behind or failing. My path has zigzagged its way through life. Maybe it will continue to zigzag. But now, I am taking control of my life again and I will be the one to evaluate and decide and reevaluate and change my mind if I need to about what I want to do when.
So, I have now decided that my thirties are going to be great. They might be the best years of my life. My twenties have helped me grow and realize that I need to know myself before I can see where I am going in life. I am doing that, so I feel like I am succeeding on my own time. My thirties, well, those will be ten years that allow me to go after what I want, and I am now looking forward to them. I always had this
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