35!
What a nice number. Feels like a destination.
I’ve been warned that this is when I’m going to have a midlife crisis.
That’s funny because I’ve already finished having my midlife crisis.
In fact, I seem to have a life crisis every year.
I quite enjoy having them – I’d be alarmed if I didn’t.
All my life I’ve been an explorer.
I’ve been lucky enough to explore mountains and forests and waterfalls and fields.
But what has always thrilled me is exploring how people think, what goes on in their heads, how they interpret life and love and purpose and meaning.
I get a kick out of having the smallest opportunity to look into someone’s mind.
It’s a real privilege.
This year, I had the opportunity to explore my own head.
It was a terrifying and rewarding experience.
I’ve always thought that you can’t possibly know someone else entirely.
But now I think that there’s no way I will know myself entirely.
I’m barely scratching the surface.
I’ve undergone possibly the biggest revamp of my personality since I was 19.
I feel like someone’s reached inside me and pulled out my guts and soul and heart and mind and prodded them, squeezed them, juggled with them, tap-danced on them, then arranged them differently, and put them all back in with an evil laugh.
What fun.
I don’t know if the new configuration will work yet but I’ll find out soon.
I did eight months of therapy this year: the greatest gift I've given to myself.
I started the year by quitting everything: my full-time job, my part-time job, a contract job.
Clearly those were too many jobs to handle.
Human capacity is unfortunately finite.
But I’ve realized over time that quitting is an art too.
It’s not a sign of failure.
On the contrary, quitting something has always spelled victory for me.
Knowing when to stop is an art.
Just like you ideally don’t want to overcook a dish or overwater a garden or overstuff a piece of music, you ideally don’t want to stick around in a situation that no longer serves you.
You don’t have to kill yourself to get to the top of a mountain when you could be enjoying a packet of crisps sitting on a rock by a waterfall halfway up.
I’ve tried and tested that.
As I grow older, I increasingly feel like there are some important things we don’t learn as kids, which we should.
One of the glaring gaps is life skill lessons is “How to Think”.
I think this should be a special subject in itself.
How to Think: a mandatory module taught by scientists, artists, writers, engineers, entrepreneurs, innovators, problem-solvers, roadside vendors, working parents, stay at home parents, believers, non-believers, etc.
And what about How to Deal with Conflict? That stuff really matters.
And survival books?
More than how to survive on an island, I think we need material on How to Survive in Society.
How to survive right here, right now, not just in some far-fetched situation.
Or maybe everyone’s cracked this and it’s just me!
Anyway. The whole series of books will be packaged nicely and called How to Life.
Yes, How to Life not how to live.
Life. A How-to. I wish I had had this manual while growing up.
Like millions of women in India and across the world, I have been inappropriately groped in public (and private) spaces as a child, a teenager, and an adult.
A friend of mine from another country who lived in India for a long time remarked, “If you accumulate bad karma over and over and over again, you know what happens?” I asked what, and he said, “You’ll be born as a woman in India.”
It made me cry.
I realised what it meant to be a fearless woman when I walked on an empty street in Oslo and swam by myself in a lake in the middle of a forest.
I’ve travelled alone plenty of times but for some reason, this was so special.
It was just me and the lake and the trees and the sky. Highlight of the year.
I think I’m a closet hippie and a wild rebel trapped in a mind that often, much to my annoyance, seeks social acceptance.
Such conflict.
Wow, the things I’ve started to reveal in these posts.
People keep telling me that I’m brave to share so much of my personal stuff online.
But to be honest I don’t feel brave at all.
I don’t fear it so it doesn’t make me brave to do it.
I find myself being a misfit in society more often than I’d like to admit.
How to Survive as a Misfit in Society. Special edition.
I don’t care what people think about my comics, which often reflect my deepest thoughts, but I agonize over how many exclamation marks I use in work emails, whether I’ve talked too much in my first meeting with a potential friend, whether I’ve been rude in a Whatsapp message without intending to.
I seem to be anxious about the small stuff and reasonably chilled out about the big stuff.
Swimming helps immensely with anxiety.
Ah, swimming. It saved me this year.
Just that movement. Gliding, pulling, gliding, pulling.
This year I swam in open waters.
What a feeling to float on your back under a great big sky!
Interesting things I heard this year:
“You’ll get there faster by going slower.” – a woman I met during a solo trip to Cornwall.
“I’d like to be as self-unaware as possible.” – a friend, after therapy.
“I want to go to London one day just to see how there are so many people in one place, like people go to zoos to see animals.” – a girl from Lapland, who’d grown up in the forest, with reindeer and pine trees for friends.
“It’s always worth spending money for mental peace.” – my wise partner.
“I’m so proud of you.” – my mom, on a couple of occasions this year.
“Don’t worryyyyy! You can practise and get better.” – a friend’s 4 year old daughter, who was trying to be kind about my bad dancing to her fav Frozen songs.
“Even though I didn’t understand it, I had faith in us and knew that we would figure it out.” – a friend, after we had to Deal with Conflict.
“It's not your fault. The brain will always want to protect you and keep you safe.” – my therapist.
Nowadays I’m much more guarded, less willing to trust, and more careful about my Resource Usage.
I told a friend very proudly about my progress on this front.
I declared that I was going to be cherry-picky about what I gave to whom.
He looked at me and said, “But you’re you. You love and trust without boundaries. That’s who you are.”
Hmmmm. That struck a chord.
One of my favourite movies is Kiki’s Delivery Service, which I’ve watched many many times.
I used to think it’s about growing up.
I rewatched it and realized that it’s about independence.
Then I rewatched it and figured that it’s actually about loneliness.
Then I saw it again and realized that it’s about burnout!
You know that moment when Jiji stops talking to Kiki?
That moment has been this full year for me.
But, like Kiki, I managed to sit my butt on my broom and make it work.
Cheers to the unbearable lightness of inescapable adulthood.
The greatest lesson I've learned in my 35 years of life is that Stuff Has To Get Done.
This year has been all about Setting Boundaries.
I went to my therapist with a very well-thought out list of all the things I didn't want to be.
I wanted to be a New Person.
Example:
Does not want to be: people pleaser, second guesser, averse to change
Wants to be: uninhibited, self-assured, fearless, free
I was so silly, I thought I could become a whole new person just by ticking boxes off a list.
Oh well, we live and learn.
35 years of living and learning!!
I don’t feel bad at all about growing old.
I feel quite good actually.
I understand things better, I have met more non-like-minded people, I have listened to more amazing music, read amazing writing, had even more good food, had more interesting conversations, deepened some relationships, let go of some, been anchored by the people who matter most, and have hopefully served as an anchor too.
That's a lot in a short period of time.
Ha. A bargain!
The biggest victory this year has been that I like myself.
Like, I really like myself – the full package – insecurities and cellulite and greying hair and pre-coffee grumpiness... even a little bit of the people-pleasing and second-guessing.
Why, I might even say that I'm beautiful.
Here’s to another year of living and learning and having my guts and heart and soul and mind rearranged in a new configuration.
I’ll find ways to love that person, whoever she turns out to be.
Happy next year to me.
