I’m Letting Go of the Need To Be Young

I’m 28.

On second thought, maybe I should stop saying, I’m XX.

More accurately, I have been alive as the human being called “Anita” on planet Earth for 28.7 years thus far. 

I’m 28 years alive. 

Is this young? Old? I don’t know. 

The issue on the table is that one day, soon, I will have 30 years alive and the era of my twenties will be officially over. 

There was a part of me that wanted to be a “massive success” in my twenties. We are a society that worships youth. Being young is being beautiful and being beautiful is being worthy. This message is told over and over again in explicitly in advertising, implicitly in movies and verbally by people.

I wish it were different— and there are pockets of the world where it’s different— but, for the most part, this is what “modern” people believe.

“Being young is better.” 

I know it’s not the truth, but I have to consciously vocalize it and manifest it by writing pieces like this to remind myself that I’m not insane. 

There is no young and no old. There is a spectrum of age and wisdom. We will exist on earth at any given age, and each time we stay on earth long enough for our planet to make another cycle around the sun, we have been blessed. 

Gather more years on earth is magnificent.

We are the sum of all of our relationships, lessons, actions and choices. And we are much more. We just are.  We are human beings and ageless spirits. 

Being Free of Age

Imagine what it would feel like to like in a society that does not calculate age like we do in the west. There are places in the world where babies are with no birth certificates and no concept of what year it is on the modern calendar. 

Without the pervasive age label, we would not feel the need to “prove” ourselves by a certain age or compare ourselves to others based on age. 

We might appreciate our elders more, for we would see in them the depth of experience, the clarity of time, the resilience of perseverance. 

I look at my younger self, and I wish I could have told her to savour every moment of the journey. Don’t be in such a rush to grow up. Enjoy the process of exploring the unknown. 

Now I must look at my future self and let her tell me who I can become. I will not be a 30-something who lives as if she is 20-something, pretending she is forever 21 with heavy Instagram filters. 

I am walking into the next version of me, bringing all of the lessons, wisdom, youthfulness and freedom of my 20’s into a different era. I will be 30 years alive and blazing.

It’s important for me to make peace with age, because otherwise, I’ll carry around the leak of insecurity and low self-worth. It is a blessing to have lived all these years. It is a blessing to be eager for the future. It is a blessing to be alive today, living the life I have been given. 

The Blessing of Growing Up

What do you want to be when you grow up? 

Never stop asking that question. Even if people stop asking me, I will never stop asking it to myself. (This question also makes a great conversation starter!) 

I want to be a writer. I want to be a filmmaker and make videos that can touch lives from anywhere in the world. I want to tell meaningful, touching stories. I want to experience working at a company that inspires me. I want to travel the world, making more content, telling more stories. I want to do the things that only I can do, and do them with the highest level of excellence I am capable of. I want to go live at more retreat centers and connect with travellers, and tell their stories. I want to have homes around the world. I want to build retreat centers-creative homes-incubators-accelerators around the world. 

Oh wait… 

I am a writer. I am a filmmaker. I can check most things on my Growing Up list. I am still doing most of them and the rest are in the works. That means… I am living! 

What do you want to be when you grow up? 

This question allows us to see that may be living in the very dreams that we once prayed for. I know I am. I remind myself of this daily. I need to, because I am determined to thrive here.

In order for me to keep growing in life, I am letting the idea of Beauty = Youth = Worthiness go. 

There is no person telling me, “Oh, you totally wasted your 20’s, Anita.” I have internalized this voice, which must be a combo of parent-teacher-advertising-fear. This voice, however, is NOT the voice of truth. It is not the voice of life. 

I am replacing that equation with: 

Being Alive = Worthy = Blessed

I am making peace with the fact that I never became a millionaire in my 20’s. I know that may sound absurd, but it was dreamt from the part of me that was insecure, alone and afraid. If you make a lot of money, I thought, then people will accept me as a success and I’ll be okay. I’ll be worthy of love. 

The things that I lived and accomplished in my 20’s were perfect and just what I needed.

I am worthy of love because I am alive. The fact that I exist makes me a child of God. I am taken care of by the God-force-Love-Of-The-Universe who is providing for all of my current needs and future needs. This Love knows me even better than I know myself. I am seen. I am loved. I am accepted as I am. So I accept, love and see myself. 

This un-learning, re-loving process is the ultimate healing of my heart. Perhaps it will be a lifelong journey Home, and each time I remind myself that I am loved, I pump one more ounce of blood into new cells. This is how I am reshaping my mind and my identity.

This is how I am becoming the 30-year young version of me that I want to be. :)