I love being 30.

This post is dedicated to all my friends and loved ones who are dreading the inevitable, who have reached the inevitable or are in the middle of it. I know how you feel, I have been there and I’m still in the middle of it.

There came a day in my life when I discovered a school friend on facebook, looked at the picture and thought “ Uh… She looks middle aged.” And my inner conscience said, “Duh, so are you!”

Facing the mirror, a stranger looks back at me. “Your skin is different”, says the stranger, “the nasolabial folds are deep, and there are traces of crow’s feet. Oh, and there’s the double chin! The anti wrinkle crème may help.”

“I’m not using any of that” says the me.

That took a while to sink in, meaning the inevitable fact that we don’t get younger and that it shows.

But I do hope that for me it would show in other ways too…

Wisdom. Patience. Kindness. Understanding. Better interpersonal relationships.

However having come to terms with it, I realise it’s not so bad after all. In fact here are some reasons I love being 30.

1. I have a personality! While through the teens and the 20s, I’ve been trying to discover who I was, now I know who I am and what I want to be known for.
2. I’m past the age of being ‘hit on’ all the time, so now I can make independent decisions on who I want to associate with and for what reason.
3. I am more self confident about myself, because in the past one decade, I have realised my weaknesses and my strengths and accept myself for who I am.
4. I have fewer, and closer friends. The real ones, the ones who really matter, have stuck around especially through the hard times, the others who haven’t, obviously didn’t matter.
5. Conversations run deep, much beyond clothes, fashion, make up and boy friends and now include what makes people, what breaks them, why we exist and on how to balance pretensions and appearances and religion(!)
6. I look at life through a lens of possibilities and realise that the best part is not over, in fact, it is yet to come.

I would like to share a poem that touched my heart, by Lisa TerKeurst from her book “The bathtub is overflowing but I feel Drained”. Now I know the kind of woman I want to be few decades from now. And I have no fear about it.

“I looked at the older woman and wondered what it meant,

Do we tell with our body about the life we have spent?

The wrinkles on her face, the posture of her back,

The fingers softly bent, the joy in her laugh.

I’d seen other faces marked with a frown and scorn,

Their presence seemed quite harsh, their spirit very worn.

But this woman was a beauty, despite the evidence of time.

Peace in her cloudy eyes and laughter behind her laugh lines.

She had a grace about her, though her body was now slow,

For she had learned the joy of being, and in her heart she knows,

She spent her life in celebration, choosing joy to be found

In whatever life gave her, she stood on solid ground.

Lord, may the markings on my body be like hers in some way

That I loved and laughed and gave and celebrated every single day. “

 

Photo credit- http://www.thekrazylife.com