Nope, don't panic. I'm not 30 yet. I've only just entered the final year of my twenties (hbd2m, yay!). I simply felt obliged to offer a somwhat brief reflection on this precipice of an age because why not. Perhaps you will make sense of, and even relate to, some of it.
First I must confess: I've been looking forward to the start of my thirties ever since the first time I caught myself trying to figure out a precise formula for whatever it meant to be a happy and successful mature adult woman in the prime of her life. Second confession incoming: I started seriously pondering and then trying to work towards such grand theories from a weirdly young age. I remember ten year old Seunny watching all those 00s rom coms with their frazzled leading ladies at the ripe 'old' age of 30 and clutching at varying levels of shit-togetherness, thinking 'I wonder what I'll get right/wrong when I get there... I can't wait to get there'.
It wasn't the glamorous depictions of frazzledness or getting-of-shit-together that necessarily appealed to me, but the privilege of making one's own life choices and the freedom to be gloriously, imperfectly oneself along the way. It's funny because, looking at how my life in the run-up to this slightly arbitrary age milestone has actually panned out so far, my reality and my ideals might seem more than a bit incongruous from the outside. It would seem that I've made all the 'sensible' (or 'conventional', 'prescribed') life choices, chased a narrow and socially acceptable view of 'perfection' and, maybe to some, it may also seem like I've attained a level of it especially when compared to those rom com leading ladies (really I'm just looking at the problematic icon that is Bridget Jones here - also don't ask why I was allowed to watch these movies at ten years old, let's just accept the 00s were a problematic decade for everyone involved and move swiftly on).
Last month I wrote an embarrassingly shallow and patronising blog post. It waxed on about how the most apt metaphor for Life wasn't a sprint or even a marathon, but actually a banquet at which we should all simply enjoy whatever random dish was placed in front of us, however extravagant or plain, and do so with gratitude and humility instead of an envious or anxious eye on whatever our fellow guests were served. Even for my own standards it was pretty awful stuff. But I do think that blog post was my attempt to put to words a few of the bigger insecurities I've held close while approaching thirty like the most determined steamroller you've ever seen. It all just unfortunately spilled out under the form of some pretentious thought-piece thinly masking the fact that, while I've always wanted (and still very much want) this outwardly postcard-picture ‘conventional’ life of mine, I wasn't actually expecting to have any of this by this age and sometimes have doubts about it or just completely take it for granted. Like any normal human I suppose. And while I'm generally the most fulfilled and content I've ever felt in this little life thus far, the farther along I go, the more I realise my youthful self-assuredness and all the confidence I've stored up to get me through adulthood will inevitably unravel in the face of what true maturity and wisdom probably is: a total, headlong, eyes-open dive into all that which we can never fully know or understand, both within and outside of ourselves. Such lofty things, I’ve quickly come to learn, are not governed by arbitrary age milestones…
Don't get it twisted, I fear the mess and upheaval this utterly chaotic process of unravelling must surely bring, and I certainly don't think I'll get to that level of maturely embracing the deep dive any time soon. I sure hope I will, but I'm presently clinging onto way too much and have far more to work through as I peel through the layers of my formative years while pressing on with my future ones (I'm doing the work, as they say). And yes, there are now two (soon to be three) other beautiful, magnificent, complicated, frustrating humans at the centre of my life whose personal growth I need and want to prioritise while I try to work on myself as well. There really isn't as much time for my favourite pastime of angsty naval-gazing as I'd like these days, she says with a sigh...
I do also find that the privilege and freedom and self-embracing imperfection I once enshrined as successful markers of healthy early-middle-agedom look a whole lot more complex up close now, and will probably look even more so in another decade. All the privilege I've earned thus far now centres on being able to literally and emotionally afford to continue living comfortably with my life choices regardless of whether they turn out to be 'good' or 'bad' or 'meh' ones. My freedom to choose the life I want is there for the taking on paper as it has always been but, as I have already said, this now rarely extends beyond those who are just as if not more important to me than myself. There is little room on deck for self-centred choices if I truly want the ultimate good of everyone aboard my little boat. These days my imperfections are very much allowed full exposure, sometimes on centre stage even, but they're not so ridiculously self-conscious as to think they exist alone under a spotlight - they interact within a messy performance of many other egos and imperfections that have every right as mine to be there, and they must navigate this play with great care as they proceed.
I'm afraid I've come to the end of all the pondering I can muster on the subject of my ageing. I genuinely don't know if any of what I've written has made an ounce of sense, even to me, but I've enjoyed sitting down to write it all the same. I'm looking forward to thirty next year, but let me now recline further back and enjoy twenty-nine while I still have it in sight, stretching before me with all its heady promise of love and mess and hope and wondrous growth.
