What Turning 30 Means (To Me)
I will be turning 30 in three months. These are the final three months of my 20’s.
I’ve been mentally and spiritual preparing myself for this transition because I don’t want it to pass me by. I don’t want to miss it’s significance.
It’s common to here people dreading turning older, especially women. It’s as if, as a society, we don’t want to face that we are stepping into new stages of life; we want to cling onto youth and the perceived sense of freedom and beauty that go with it. I don’t want my 30’s to roll around and for me to say, “I still feel like I’m 25.”
I want to be 30, to be in the process of becoming the woman I am meant to be.
I want to honour the chapter of my life that was my 20’s, to acknowledge it for all the joy and good it brought me. I want to look at where I made a wrong turn, where I want to do better, so that my perspectives are fuller.
I lived my 20’s to the absolute fullest that I knew how: I traveled in, lived in and worked in over 37 countries. I tried on at least a dozen different lifetimes. I could have become a scuba diving instructor, nomadic filmmaker, a traveling yoga teacher, a social media influencer, an English teacher, a meditation teacher. I couldn’t have made it any better.
Turning 30 is a big deal for me. I see it as the start of adulthood. Despite the governments trying to extend “youth adult” programs to 35, even 40 year olds, something in me disagrees. Some people already have 2.5 kids, by 30. Turning 30 makes me an adult.
It’s the start of a new decade. It’s the start of the rest of my adult life. From this point on, from age 30 until my deathbed, I am an adult.
Although I love the whimsical, carefree, dreamer, adventurous part of me that reigned in my 20’s, life is calling me to grow a new layer. A baby plant keeps growing branches, until one day, you can’t recognize the baby leaves anymore; they are incorporated into the whole plant.
Here are some reflections on what stepping into my 30’s means to me:
Giving Myself (and Others) Time TO Grow.
Working on a cruise ship at some point in my 20’s
In my twenties, I cared a lot about if something happened when I was 21 or 25. I wanted my success to happen NOW. I needed to prove that I had “become something” so I was always chasing the next big thing, which for me was new countries, alternative ways of living.
In my thirties, it’s not going to matter if something happens when I’m 31, 33, 36 or even 40. I’m already in the “adult” category, so what’s the rush?
I remind myself of this constantly. It’s ok to stay in this job for 3 years, 4 years, 5 years… what exactly is the rush, Anita? When it’s for me to leave, I will know.
2. Accepting The Life I’ve Been Given, Instead of Constantly Trying To Change It
In my 20’s, I started reading self-help books like The 4-Hour Work Week and thinking that I could change my life. I could design a better life for myself if I only implemented certain strategies. Self-help books make us feel good, because they give us a sense of control.
The truth, however, is that there are some things we can’t change. I could hustle, write a bunch of emails, and get myself a gig in Costa Rica. It seems like I have changed my life, but I cannot change how long it will take me to adjust to a new culture. I cannot change that I will forever look like an Asian, even though I’m Canadian. I can’t change that my family will still live in Canada.
In my 20’s, I believed that “we are the masters of our fate, the captains of our soul.” I believe that time will prove that we are not. There is something bigger, a higher intelligence, God that is orchestrating events in my life.
I come at life with much more humility these days. Now I can see, and honestly admit, how much arrogance I had in my 20’s. I absorbed it from self-help books, but I also let it fester in me. Pride seemed like a good thing. I wanted to be proud of my life, but things always turned out empty because I didn’t have a spiritual connection to God.
These days I often think of the good that is in my life, the good that God has placed here. Although it’s not what I had planned, I accept it and embrace.
3. No Longer Trying to Be Somebody
Working in Nevada with friends at some point in my 20’s
This is a big one for me. I started my first blog when I was about 22. I started what would become anitawinglee.com when I was 23, in my last semester of university. Since that time, I was on an identity-seeking, identity-creating crusade. I had a lot of good intentions, I genuinely wanted to help people, but I was also blinded by my own insecurities and fears. These days, I can admit that “Project: Anita Wing Lee” was also created out of loneliness and grief.
It was only that incident in Montenegro in the summer of 2017 that brought the crusade to a grinding halt and stopped all of my creative projects.
As I look ahead to my 30’s, I desire to find my identity as a child of God, a beloved daughter of the Sovereign Being who created me.
I trust that God has a better plan for my life than I could conjure up for myself. I trust that God can fill that void that led to the creation of “Anita Wing Lee”. I want to be someone who doesn’t need an internet identity to be whole. I want to be whole in myself, filled up with God, in me. I don’t want to be creating posts, photos, videos in an effort to fill the void.
So, as I look into 2021, I can already sense that I am ready to finally, fully, let go of all my AWL creative projects and just do life with God.
4. Finding a Sacred Rhythm For Living
Since I’m not in a rush or striving to create anything in particular, I get to learn to embrace the beauty of the everyday. I am learning how to find weekly rhythms that nurture my soul, monthly rhythms that reflect the seasons and yearly rhythms that integrate all that I’m learning.
I wake up early and I sleep early. My mom jokes that I’m like an old lady because I like to be in bed by 8:00pm, but I’m ok with that. This is the personal rhythm that feels like a gift from God. It’s how God made me.
I have a rhythm of practicing the sabbath. I have a rhythm for how I like to open up and close my days. I have rhythms for what I eat that nurtures my body and soul. I have rhythms of going out into nature and walking on trails often. I have rhythms of reading books and making art. These rhythms and routines have added a shimmering quality to my life. They are the next evolution of all the soulful practices from other cultures that I picked up while traveling.
This is the view from the hill where I live, in the town on the outskirts of the Toronto area.
Even with my writing, I no longer feel like I need to bust out a gazillion blogs. I intend to still be writing 10, 20 years from now, so I’m letting myself learn and practice incrementally. I have daily and seasonal rhythms for when I write and it nurtures me.
There is a deep sense of surrender in me as I walk into my thirties. I know that God is tilling the soil of my soul and I have fully surrendered myself to the process.
On the outside, for now, my life often looks the same.
Same house. Same neighbourhoods. Same country.
But in the interior world, I am traversing a territory I have never touched before.
