Today I’m 23. My birthday always feels rather more like a new year than January 1st does and though I never make resolutions either on the national new year or on my own new year (why set yourself up for depression the following December 31 [or in my case, October 31] when you realize that, after all, you’re only human and the year, though wonderful, was just a year), here is what I hope becomes of me this year:
I hope to delight in getting to know 23. I hope that this new year I am braver and stronger, that I learn how to love better and to be less judgmental but more honest. I hope at 23 that I find the words, whatever and wherever they may be, and that I do many things.
A new age never comes without having to say goodbye to the old one. In some ways, 22 truly kicked my butt. I experienced, for example, my first mid-life crisis (more on that later), discovering, in the mean time, that who I was at 17 is not who I am today no matter how much I loved that girl. I realized also that I still lack any form of wisdom, in its broadest and narrowest senses, officially placing me in the age range of “too old to be wild and free and too young to be over the hill.” Having once been in the age range of “old enough to know better but still too young to care,” I can tell you that reaching this new plateau is, to put it nicely, an extraordinary disappointment. I don’t care how romantic it is to be a song lyric, there is nothing romantic about much of growing up.
Still, 22 is tucking itself away in a corner of my heart and I am sad to see it go. Why? Because 22 taught me something else about growing up. It doesn’t stink as much as I thought it did. Okay so it’s not romantic, but some things still are.
For the first time, at 22, I felt like perhaps I wanted to be an adult, wanted to view relationships and events in my life from that perspective and act accordingly. And for the first time I felt that being an adult may be beautiful in that you never lose the child that you were because it was she who brought you to this place and because you and she are one and the same. The five-year old, big cheeked, enormous imaginationed Roya is still in me, the eternally eight Roya, the wildly happy 11 Roya are too, even the 17-who-I-am-not Roya is still something I was, and so something I am today. Growing up, perhaps, doesn’t mean losing childhood entirely; it means having the strength built up from all those ages you were to create who you have become.
At 22 I began to learn how to slow down, to discover happiness in waiting and stepping lightly and moving forward only a step a day instead of in leaps and bounds. I learned about ties and how to have stronger and better relationships. I have never been more successful, in fact, in the past have failed miserably, at holding up my end of a friendship, or a loveship. I began to grow into myself. Cranberries became my new thing. I organized all the old letters people have sent me throughout my life.
And now, here comes 23 and this is what I have come to realize:
- I now have only five years left during which to acquire a horse and a piece of land on which to put it.
- I am the same age as my mom was when she got married.
- I have yet to learn to play guitar, learn Spanish, or learn to surf.
- This just may be my year to write the next great American novel...but the pressure has never been greater.
- I am still afraid of crabs.
In light of these realizations, and others, I have gathered together some quotes that I hope will guide me through 23 – some profound sayings that remind me that I have never said anything this remarkable, but also that there is always hope...
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” ~Matthew 7:7-8
“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.” ~Blaise Pascal
“President Roosevelt once said, ‘speak softly and carry a big stick.’ I say to you, ‘yell loudly and swing a yard stick.’” ~Jason
“I defend myself against failure in my main design by making every inch of the road to it pleasant.” ~Emerson
“So damn easy to say that life’s so hard. Everybody’s got their share of battle scars. As for me, I’d like to thank my lucky stars that I’m alive and well...And today you know that’s good enough for me. Breathin’ in and out’s a blessing can’t you see. Today’s the first day of the rest of my life and I’m alive and well.” ~Kenny Chesney, Dean Dillon, & Mark Tamburino
“There are instincts for all the crises of life.” ~Victor Hugo
“I heard what was said of the universe / Heard it and heard it of several thousand years; / It is middling well as far as it goes – but is that all?” ~ Walt Whitman
-R.A.
No comments:
Post a Comment