As I hit yet another internal shift, I find more appreciation in the moment for those who influence my life and am less attached to the idea that duration should rate experience. I'm learning to release all parameters as a means to define satiation. I am finding ways to live less within grief and am balancing the sweetness of fond melancholy with the ability to see and embrace memories and transition for what they bring into my life rather than what I lose when they're gone. To be able to move ahead. Let go.
This world has tied up too much consequence within duplicitous boxes of should's and should not's. Everything from birth on the timeline to death seems to be carefully notated, evaluated and labeled. The measurement of human worth has been rated upon the relevance of expected accomplishment in accordance with processes of culture and tradition. It's stifling, inaccurate. Damaging.
The milestones we look forward to as giddy, energetic and invincible twenty-something's can turn around in subsequent decades to bring disillusionment, disappointment and indirection. First relationship, first job, first car. Starry-eyed and reaching for the moon can find years later, goals and markers not met. And therein lies the temptation to worry about age, rank and station. Therein lies the disingenuous abyss of perceived failure.
Society is in awe of a large family but thinks far less of a woman who might have to go at motherhood alone. She is labeled, categorized and not given opportunity to present a different story. And she faces either acceptance as a unit or years of loneliness since further prospects don't look kindly at the extras. Similarly, men who find themselves between employment or working a job they never envisioned for themselves, ride the same waves of anger and dis-ease. It seems that it's all pass or fail. Successful or pathetic. And growing older only exacerbates the shame.
Human nature seems to only acknowledge validation if it can be substantiated on something definitive, tangible. I can imagine that there would be far less people wrestling with emptiness if the perspective of what defined worth and existence changed. The ebb and flow of life brings us in between jobs, relationships, places and experience and rarely finds one person who met their end having lived a perfect timeline.
I think of where I am now and where I thought I would be. In many ways I am in a holding pattern filled with disenchantment-a space easily fraught with invitations for bitterness and traction. In other ways, no one could have prepared me for the thought, much less the reality, that I would indeed be a mother to five glorious children. They far exceed any and all fulfillment and joy I could imagine. They are my life source...humbling, pure, smart. They remind me each day to reach for an even better version of myself.
And now, as I flirt with age and find myself within pockets of adversity, I demand to recreate the rules. To strike the measurements. To burn the boxes that cannot in any way define the nuances of change, connection, insight, perspective. I will not sum up my life based upon the contemptible and generic storefront images of success, no matter how ingrained. And I defy all indicators that suggest that self-esteem or fulfillment of joy must depend upon relationship status, career or accomplishments.
I look at heartache and discover luminous rays of recognition. I examine setback and feel a shift that leads me into miracles of new direction. I see not markers on my own timeline, but growth inside of myself. I find bonding, affinity and cognizance. I explore moments of teaching which tumble down with laughter and wisdom into the youth of my children and I watch them share it with their friends.
And I wish to shout it to the world that falling short of expectations does not have to be crippling. I say, float, shift, absorb. Accept. And continue on. Find out now, before life throws the curve ball and demands for either your surrender or defiance, what it is you really live for. Find your purpose. Be certain that when all else howls, falls, mocks or threatens to toss you over, that what you do believe in, is and will be, sustaining no matter what.
We have only one shot at life. And however redundant in its claim, the opposing messages remain stronger. Defy them. Become dependent only upon the attitudes of personal change, victories and interchange. Bask in the experiences as they happen and hold them sacred when embarking onto the next one.
This is it. And it's all ours to Define.
The milestones we look forward to as giddy, energetic and invincible twenty-something's can turn around in subsequent decades to bring disillusionment, disappointment and indirection. First relationship, first job, first car. Starry-eyed and reaching for the moon can find years later, goals and markers not met. And therein lies the temptation to worry about age, rank and station. Therein lies the disingenuous abyss of perceived failure.
Society is in awe of a large family but thinks far less of a woman who might have to go at motherhood alone. She is labeled, categorized and not given opportunity to present a different story. And she faces either acceptance as a unit or years of loneliness since further prospects don't look kindly at the extras. Similarly, men who find themselves between employment or working a job they never envisioned for themselves, ride the same waves of anger and dis-ease. It seems that it's all pass or fail. Successful or pathetic. And growing older only exacerbates the shame.
Human nature seems to only acknowledge validation if it can be substantiated on something definitive, tangible. I can imagine that there would be far less people wrestling with emptiness if the perspective of what defined worth and existence changed. The ebb and flow of life brings us in between jobs, relationships, places and experience and rarely finds one person who met their end having lived a perfect timeline.
I think of where I am now and where I thought I would be. In many ways I am in a holding pattern filled with disenchantment-a space easily fraught with invitations for bitterness and traction. In other ways, no one could have prepared me for the thought, much less the reality, that I would indeed be a mother to five glorious children. They far exceed any and all fulfillment and joy I could imagine. They are my life source...humbling, pure, smart. They remind me each day to reach for an even better version of myself.
And now, as I flirt with age and find myself within pockets of adversity, I demand to recreate the rules. To strike the measurements. To burn the boxes that cannot in any way define the nuances of change, connection, insight, perspective. I will not sum up my life based upon the contemptible and generic storefront images of success, no matter how ingrained. And I defy all indicators that suggest that self-esteem or fulfillment of joy must depend upon relationship status, career or accomplishments.
I look at heartache and discover luminous rays of recognition. I examine setback and feel a shift that leads me into miracles of new direction. I see not markers on my own timeline, but growth inside of myself. I find bonding, affinity and cognizance. I explore moments of teaching which tumble down with laughter and wisdom into the youth of my children and I watch them share it with their friends.
And I wish to shout it to the world that falling short of expectations does not have to be crippling. I say, float, shift, absorb. Accept. And continue on. Find out now, before life throws the curve ball and demands for either your surrender or defiance, what it is you really live for. Find your purpose. Be certain that when all else howls, falls, mocks or threatens to toss you over, that what you do believe in, is and will be, sustaining no matter what.
We have only one shot at life. And however redundant in its claim, the opposing messages remain stronger. Defy them. Become dependent only upon the attitudes of personal change, victories and interchange. Bask in the experiences as they happen and hold them sacred when embarking onto the next one.
This is it. And it's all ours to Define.
- This Carman Girl
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