It even sounds weird!
"Hi, I am 30!"
I mean I know and I have heard enough about the "age is nothing but a number", but it is weird when you sit back and realise that all of a sudden, you are neither in your traumatic teens, nor in the drama twenties, but you are suddenly thirty.
It is like entering the teens. All of a sudden you are a kid and then wham bham you are teen. And in all hoensty, your twenties are usually an extension of your teeange years.You are in college when you are 18, 19, and 20 (and even more if you are in a professional course or pursuing your masters!). So you are being taken care of, you are being paid a pocket money or you are doing odd jobs to support your passions and even when you are fresh and out in the world to do a proper job, you are full of adrenaline and enthusiasm to take over the world.
Suddenly you are 25. And if you are in Delhi, that is a BIG deal because now you can officially go drinking. And by the time you end reveling in your quarter life crisis, you are 27, all of a sudden it is all about getting married (you may also be married for a year by then!). And by the time you realise that your life has suddenly changed, from the teens to the twnties, from school college to work, from single to being married (and being a parent too in some cases), you hit the thirty mark.
You are expected to grow up. To take up responsibilities like they are sacrements and always, always make sense of all the decisions that you take. Whether it is about your marriage, your family, your career, everything. It is like, from a scale of 1 to 10, (1 being the lowest), you are allowed a margin of error of (minus) 1.
Is it like changing everything overnight? No. But it surely does instil the feeling of "change". It makes you feel inadequate.
When you are 30, you tend to look back, and look back alot (or at least I do) and assess about what all have you achieved.
Unfortunately, the society has put the assessment in a straight jacket of: marriage, family, kids and career. And as you assess against these you have a panic attack, because, you are failing. If not in all, then definitely in one (and if you are the kinds who has it all- then, please share, how?).
While I have definitely not failed the complete assessment, I also know that maybe things could have been better. But, jab jaago tabhi savera!
I think, the most important thing in my life that I have done and am proud of is finding my dear darling husband. He will disagree to say that, we fight like maniacs, so how can he be my best find? The fact of the matter is that, while I assess my life in the societal straight jacket, I am grateful to have found someone who is willing to change the norms, and who is willing to question everything (it does get annoying.. but..) . It makes life a little bit more exciting when we have a million apps to satiate our hunger for binge TV watching or when we just take the car and find ourselves at places like bhootgaon!
Of course life is up and down and I am not particularly happy about reaching an age where I am judged because my uterous has aged more, and us having kids has become a conversation starter. But, I am here now and I can't really help it!
I think, what I take back from my last 30 years is that while I have effectively changed as a person, from being totally hopelessly unsatisfaioed, angry teenager to a little less of the same, I am slowly becoming into my own person. I am blooming maybe a couple of years late. But I am blooming. From cooking awesome food, to learning how to argue better (respond and not react), from realising that mornings have always been under-rated (especially post the rains!) and that exercising should have been started at least 2 years ago.. from the emotional, and financial mess to trying to untangle the mess by taking control of things.. it seems that there is a lot of catching up to do. All the things (including relationships) that have been taken for granted need to be rebuilt. And these are the tasks that have been cut out for me/Us!
One more task that is just for me, is to learn patience and satisfaction. There is no dirth of things that are happening with people in my so call friend list, and I need to stop assessing my life against them. I need to learn the art of letting go, and embracing whatever comes my way. Another thing that I have to learn and accept is that even with the closest of people you can't expect them to completely change and/or adjust to yourself, there has to be a middle ground. Maybe it is time to get into meditation, and to move towards a little bit more stillness. And by that I mean, grounding your emotions to train your mind to not have oscillating emotions. To think through situations and to really be able to assess the consequences of the words coming out of my mouth. To be less angry, less unsatisfied.
This would be like a emotional rehab for me, I may lapse and re-lapse into my old patterns, but I have to try. I have to be a better person, a more solid person, because it seems that, this is what is holding me behind and has husband doubting my skills to be a grown up.
While, I try to be zen, I will also try to dance to on the crazy songs, just to remind myself that life maybe a struggle, but as kids, the most we worried about was the homework and the vacations, and how life was simpler.
Happy 30th to me!
"Hi, I am 30!"
I mean I know and I have heard enough about the "age is nothing but a number", but it is weird when you sit back and realise that all of a sudden, you are neither in your traumatic teens, nor in the drama twenties, but you are suddenly thirty.
It is like entering the teens. All of a sudden you are a kid and then wham bham you are teen. And in all hoensty, your twenties are usually an extension of your teeange years.You are in college when you are 18, 19, and 20 (and even more if you are in a professional course or pursuing your masters!). So you are being taken care of, you are being paid a pocket money or you are doing odd jobs to support your passions and even when you are fresh and out in the world to do a proper job, you are full of adrenaline and enthusiasm to take over the world.
Suddenly you are 25. And if you are in Delhi, that is a BIG deal because now you can officially go drinking. And by the time you end reveling in your quarter life crisis, you are 27, all of a sudden it is all about getting married (you may also be married for a year by then!). And by the time you realise that your life has suddenly changed, from the teens to the twnties, from school college to work, from single to being married (and being a parent too in some cases), you hit the thirty mark.
You are expected to grow up. To take up responsibilities like they are sacrements and always, always make sense of all the decisions that you take. Whether it is about your marriage, your family, your career, everything. It is like, from a scale of 1 to 10, (1 being the lowest), you are allowed a margin of error of (minus) 1.
Is it like changing everything overnight? No. But it surely does instil the feeling of "change". It makes you feel inadequate.
When you are 30, you tend to look back, and look back alot (or at least I do) and assess about what all have you achieved.
Unfortunately, the society has put the assessment in a straight jacket of: marriage, family, kids and career. And as you assess against these you have a panic attack, because, you are failing. If not in all, then definitely in one (and if you are the kinds who has it all- then, please share, how?).
While I have definitely not failed the complete assessment, I also know that maybe things could have been better. But, jab jaago tabhi savera!
I think, the most important thing in my life that I have done and am proud of is finding my dear darling husband. He will disagree to say that, we fight like maniacs, so how can he be my best find? The fact of the matter is that, while I assess my life in the societal straight jacket, I am grateful to have found someone who is willing to change the norms, and who is willing to question everything (it does get annoying.. but..) . It makes life a little bit more exciting when we have a million apps to satiate our hunger for binge TV watching or when we just take the car and find ourselves at places like bhootgaon!
Of course life is up and down and I am not particularly happy about reaching an age where I am judged because my uterous has aged more, and us having kids has become a conversation starter. But, I am here now and I can't really help it!
I think, what I take back from my last 30 years is that while I have effectively changed as a person, from being totally hopelessly unsatisfaioed, angry teenager to a little less of the same, I am slowly becoming into my own person. I am blooming maybe a couple of years late. But I am blooming. From cooking awesome food, to learning how to argue better (respond and not react), from realising that mornings have always been under-rated (especially post the rains!) and that exercising should have been started at least 2 years ago.. from the emotional, and financial mess to trying to untangle the mess by taking control of things.. it seems that there is a lot of catching up to do. All the things (including relationships) that have been taken for granted need to be rebuilt. And these are the tasks that have been cut out for me/Us!
One more task that is just for me, is to learn patience and satisfaction. There is no dirth of things that are happening with people in my so call friend list, and I need to stop assessing my life against them. I need to learn the art of letting go, and embracing whatever comes my way. Another thing that I have to learn and accept is that even with the closest of people you can't expect them to completely change and/or adjust to yourself, there has to be a middle ground. Maybe it is time to get into meditation, and to move towards a little bit more stillness. And by that I mean, grounding your emotions to train your mind to not have oscillating emotions. To think through situations and to really be able to assess the consequences of the words coming out of my mouth. To be less angry, less unsatisfied.
This would be like a emotional rehab for me, I may lapse and re-lapse into my old patterns, but I have to try. I have to be a better person, a more solid person, because it seems that, this is what is holding me behind and has husband doubting my skills to be a grown up.
While, I try to be zen, I will also try to dance to on the crazy songs, just to remind myself that life maybe a struggle, but as kids, the most we worried about was the homework and the vacations, and how life was simpler.
Happy 30th to me!
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