My Truest, most Beautiful Life
The day before my 24th birthday, I was bewildered with the arrival of this new age. I started feeling old. (This is where you pause and laugh because how the hell is 24 old?) Anyway, that was how I felt and this is a great example of, “your feelings are always valid but they’re not always right.” I was feeling old, valid because that was how I was feeling but, was I old? No. My feelings were not right.
I remember feeling sad and worried about myself. I was worried about my life and the pace at which I was moving. I was so sad to be where I was.
Fast forward to a few days before 25, I was mortified! My hopes and dreams for 25 were not a stone throw away, hell, they were nowhere near my horizon. I was failing my teenage self, badly. But in the midst of all the negative self-talk and disappointment was humour. I was failing with my friends. We were failures, not just me. Sorry society, we tried, we failed and now, we’re drinking wine.
My friends and I had to make a joke out of the teenage expectations of ourselves. We had to laugh at how we thought we would be married, have a kid, live in a fully paid house, drive a Mercedes Benz with a BMW driver husband and have financial freedom - in this economy. I can’t help but laugh while typing this. But my laughter is neither a self-deprecating laugh nor is it a ridiculing one. I have so much compassion for my younger self now. I have so much love for her. I know that everything she thought was a product of everything she consumed or was force-fed.
25 was when I really had to unpack success and happiness for myself. It was the age I had to take a fine look at myself and choose me. Not ideals I have no business taking on as my own. Not expectations I have no business living up to unless that are TRULY my own. 25 was the year I had to let go of everything I thought so that I could walk into what I knew.
This is my Knowing:
Only I know what my life ‘should’ look like at any given age because only I know what it feels like. I am the only person who gets to be dissatisfied and only I can amend it.
No amount of money will make up for a life not fully and truly lived.
Everything I can imagine is real.
Happiness is what I say it is. Success is what I say it is.
I don’t care how other people are living their lives, that’s their truth. Mine is different, mine belongs to me and my decisions.
Fast forward to 27. I have a new fear now: the fear of running out of my youth. This is 100% because society has taught women that they’re only beautiful and desirable as far as they’re youthful. I am working on unlearning this ridiculous and sexist dogma, but in the meantime, I am also moving to the beat of my heart’s drum. I am in love with a kind & beautiful man, I have a great job and I get to create + write meaningful content online for a community that constantly shows me so much love. I am living an incredibly beautiful life that is joyful and abundant and for that, I am grateful.
I am going to keep challenging myself to live the truest, most beautiful life I can imagine for myself but the key words here are ‘true’ and ‘beautiful’. What is true to me and what is beautiful for me. I challenge you to really peel off the layers of “should” and “supposed to” so you can live a life that you actually love. I challenge you to take a breath and ask yourself if your life and how you’re living it was your idea. Ask yourself whose voice is in your head?
We have one life. When we get to the end of it, all the public approval will mean nothing. The only thing that will matter, is your approval, your happiness, your satisfaction with how you lived it and only you know what that looks like.
Look inward. What is beautiful? What is true?