“sun return” is a pretentious way to say happy birthday
Today is my (golden) birthday! I was born on this day 28 years ago. My best friend said that we have been friends for 17 years, which is crazy because I remember my 17th birthday and I thought that 17 years felt like ages. Now it’s only a fraction of my life!(!!!!!!!)
Getting numerically older used to scare me in the same stomach dropping, existential way that watching a gif of the Earth and zooming out to find in it’s minuscule place in the universe makes your brain tingle and your hands go numb. The “best years of my life” and my chances of “making it” were futilely slipping away like coins in my apartment’s washing machine, leaving only the possibility of a shriveling middle age of mediocrity behind. Maybe because I didn’t know a single happy adult I thought that achieving dreams was they only way to escape a lifetime of alcoholism or depression.
That the older I got and the less commercially successful I was made the potential to become a 30 under 30 ever less likely. Why does success look better on the young in our minds? Why is it that if you don’t “make it” by the time you’re 30 you’ll seemingly never make it at all? Is it because the odds actually slim in our abilities to achieve what we want or is it because our fundamental needs like health care, retirement plans and living a full life with basic luxuries like housing and the occasional vacation are all morosely tethered to a corporate job?
When I was 18 if you had asked me where I thought I’d be at 28 I would have said I’d be an Oscar winner married to Billie Joe Armstrong with four New York Times best selling books and a clothing line. The fact that I have accomplished literally not one hint of any of that would have sent me into an existential anxiety attack. My sense of self and personality and self worth were wrapped up in what I thought I could achieve and what I had the potential to achieve. A recipe for disappointment, serves one (freezes {you} well for eternity). How can you be happy where you are now, where you are on the journey and where you are even after you have accomplished the goal, if all you care about is the single moment of achievement?
Now I am just happy to be here. Happy to be alive. My 18 year old self probably would have vomited in disappointment and the saccharine of that statement. For so long I’ve held onto this idea of wanting to please my younger self, of being someone my younger self would have been proud of… but what the fuck did she know about who I am? About life? She was 60% water 99% what her parents wanted her to be (and 0% that bitch).
It’s taken 10 years to slough off the masked layers of other people’s expectations to reveal who I actually am. These expectations we set for ourselves are rooted in who we are in the moment and who around us is trying to imbue their ideas of us to us. In every moment we are only using the consciousness we have at that moment based off of our past experiences. That’s all we can do! No sense in allowing ourselves to wallow in regret and “hindsight is 2020” mantras when in the moment in question we were literally making the most informed decision we could possibly make with the information we had at the time and the underlying intent to keep ourselves safe.
Between 18 years old and now, I have 10 more (holy shit) years of wisdom, lessons, heartbreak, joys, pleasure and pain to guide me towards who I really am and who I want to be. “May this be the holy moment be the ground from which all our future actions grow.”
When I set those expectations of success (not happiness, mind you, for in our societal hive mind success trumps all) for myself I was rooted in ego fears. I needed outside validation, I needed to feel safe, I was afraid to be my authentic self. I thought commercial success would bring all of those things to me. I thought being an Oscar winner would mean I was loved and could then love myself, I thought being married to a hot celeb would mean that I was worthy and could then stand up for myself (thought now I understand that Billie Joe is married to his soul partner and I have had to retire all of my fantasies of breaking them up, a platonic friendship will suffice at this juncture in time), I thought having a book deal would mean that what I had to say was important and it was safe to be my authentic self. It was never that I could just be those things, it was always dependent on what I had done.
Authentic love for ourselves comes from within. It is an internal crystal spring of never ending peace, assurance and grounded blessings. Drinking from it on a daily basis means that you are anchored in the swelling tides of uncertainty and the things in life that are out of our control. It means that one success does not mean it all and one disappointment does not bring with it the end of the world. It means that my true self is pure, that my authentic self is untainted. That I am free and I am love and I don’t need anyone or anything to give it to me. It means that whether or not I meet my goals I am happy. The biggest gift I have received in the past year was getting to take a sip from that spring.
Look at all of the people who have met their outside goals and are still miserable, crawling along waiting for the next hit of success to make them feel OK about themselves again. Peace and happiness and love for yourself does not come from the things you achieve. It comes from you knowing that whether you achieve or not you are worthy of being here.
Now I look forward to getting older. The older I get, the more lessons I learn, the happier I become. The less attached I become. The more I let go, the more in tune I feel and the more I think it is just such a blessing to be alive and that may very well be the most basic yet complex purpose of human existence.
(But also Billie Joe if you’re reading this hit me up.)