Next Bite

Today is my 30th birthday. When I was young I dreamed about turning thirty. I had this vague wonderful comforting feeling that by the time I was thirty I will have figured out what my life means and how I am supposed to live it. I’d be a grown-up; I will have read so many books and understood so much about the universe and the human mind that I would have no trouble telling right from wrong and acting according to that knowledge. And here I am, thirty years old, and the only thing I know for sure is that everything in the world is much more complicated than I ever imagined, that there are no easy answers to any questions, no certainties about what’s right and what’s wrong. Here I am, thirty years old, and my biggest life accomplishment so far is that I’ve lost my illusions about what my life accomplishments are supposed to be. The emperor has no clothes and I am the emperor. I’m on some kind of path, that I can feel, but I’m walking in a direction that is seldom clear to me. I have lost courage over and over again along this way and had to stop and look around to find my bearings. I think now that this part of being forced to stop and look around is the most important part. I hate stopping. I hate the feeling of not moving forward, of not making progress – the measurable, bottom-line kind. I’ve been in a hurry for many years; I’ve run away from confusion and fear and doubt; I was terrified to take the time to sit inside them for a while and see what they can teach me. I’ve started to stop just in the last year or so, and I felt the most uncomfortable but also the most honest I have in years. This is the place I want to set out from on my 30th birthday. No more running. No more getting ahead of myself. No more lists of things I have to do before I die. So instead of Happy Birthday, what I want to wish myself is Happy Today. Husband is baking chocolate cupcakes for me. I can’t wait to bite in.