Today’s the big day. I’m holding a gathering for my parents and Adam’s parents to meet for the very first time. This is thirty, everyone. His parents are meeting her parents. We are so adult now, you wouldn’t be able to tell us a part from an entire room full of them.
It’s all very exciting. Over the past week Adam and I have really worked at making our apartment look like a home. It already did look like a home, but now it really looks like a home. (It’s amazing what a few pictures and a wine rack can do for a place).
Everything feels very anticipatory. It feels very strangely like a coming-of-age. I feel like I’m finally a real human being.
These past almost-thirty days writing this series have been super tough. It’s hard to keep writing a post each day and it’s hard to keep coming up with new content. I’m at the point now where I’m writing these things really late at night or really early in the morning, but I’m really glad I did it so I could get it all out of me. My twenties were a whirlwind of misunderstanding, and I’m so happy I got to work through everything here on the blog, because everything feels really clear now.
I want to thank you for hearing me out these past few weeks. We’re all at different points in our lives, and I really do want to thank you so much for taking the time to read these entries, as I’ve reminisced about the past and tried to put the pieces together for the future.
I think mostly I’ve realized that life isn’t meant to be understood. I try to figure things out but it just makes my head hurt. I’m enjoying the journey now, and I’m really patient about what’s to come. I really don’t know where that came from, because I’ve never seen myself as all that patient. But I feel now more than ever that I am so patient with the way these side projects are going. I keep hitting road blocks with my new website, and I have to say, every time I hit a road block, I just google how to get out of it, and figure it the hell out so I can move forward.
As Marie Forleo says, everything is figure outable.
My favorite part about almost being thirty is realizing that things aren’t going to happen over night. Sometimes you only have 15 minutes here and there to work on things, and you use those babies up because every step is a step in the right direction. And the journey is the most important part! Even though it’s sometimes hard to believe that taking one simple step forward requires 13 additional steps that take at least 3 days to research and get done.
Dr. Holden says when he walks his daughter to the river sometimes, she stops along the way to look at bugs and strange leaves on the ground. He always has to shoo her along and keep her moving because their goal is to get to the river. What should be a 10 minute walk, takes 30+ minutes.
But that’s when he realizes the goal was never to get to the river, the goal was to walk to the river. It’s the journey that should be embraced, because we don’t need the goals at the end of the road to make us happy, it’s not about that. All we ever need is already inside of us.
Did I talk about the already principle here? How we’re ‘already’ beautiful? ‘Already’ prosperous? ‘Already’ who want to be, and where?
I can’t remember, but that’s the gist. I used to think that was a complacent way to look at life, but now I see that it’s okay to want to do things with your life, and have 100 projects, but know that you’re already a success while you’re on your way. When you’re on your way, that is the way.
Jim Carey once really startled me when he said something like this in that famous commencement speech. something along the lines of…why would I try to be something big and special, when there is nothing bigger than myself?
When he said that, all of my anxiety about the future deflated right out of me. I learned to realize that there’s no need for me to work so hard at being something I already am. (Jim Carey also called this a sly trick of the ego). It taught me to enjoy working on my passions, without tying expectations or outcomes to them. I would work hard at them and whatever would happen would happen in its divine time and way.
As Gabrielle Bernstein once said, let God be your publicist. He’ll introduce us to the right people at the right time to get whatever opportunities we need off the ground, and the more we stop gripping things in our lives so tightly, the easier it will be to let the good things wash over us. If we want our heads to stop aching, we need to drop the hammer we’re hitting ourselves over the head with and learn to receive.
That’s my piece for today, and I’m taking it with me into this beautiful one. I’m so excited for this parental meeting, that I’m up at the break of dawn. Enjoy your Saturday, here is a passage from Robert Holden to take with you today on your journey.
“We try really hard at what we think we don’t deserve.”
Take soft, easy steps today.