Life in my Mid-Thirties

They say that your thirties are better than your twenties because your twenties are a time of preparation.  Everything is up in the air.  Most of your time is spent in preparation for times to come — preparing for a career, preparing for promotions in that career, preparing for marriage and beginning a marriage, preparing for kids.  You get the idea.

I remember when I was in my twenties reading a lot about quarter life crises – the psychological crisis that happens when a young person ventures out into the life they have been preparing years for with all of these hopes and dreams, and they finally get there and are left with a big old, “so this is it?”

I think I went through that whole quarter life crisis period in my life.

I remember I was working in downtown Chicago and I would occasionally take a ferry to get from the train station to my office.  I was on a ferry with a couple dozen other people.  The weather was spectacular with a calm, cool breeze blowing off of the water.  I was dressed in my professional clothes, heading to the job I spent four years in college preparing for.  I had gotten everything that I wanted.

And the only thought that would go through my head was, “win the rat race, and you are still a rat.”

Repeatedly it went through my head for days.  As I would walk on the concrete, it would be keeping time with my steps.  As I typed on my computer, there it was.  It followed me into meetings and home at night.

What was all of this for?

I was working sometimes very late into the evening.  I was giving everything to my job.  And all for what?  So other people other places could make money selling products that really were doing no one any good at all?

What would happen if I left?  They would get someone else to do my job.  What would happen if the companies went bankrupt?  Other companies would take their places.  Or not.  Because it didn’t really matter.  We weren’t feeding the hungry.  We weren’t healing the sick.  We were just making some people very, very wealthy.

And so I quit my job, and I went to grad school.

Arguably, this was a silly decision.  I had worked a year and a half at this company and rumor had it that I was about to earn a promotion that day.  But I walked in and gave my notice.  I went from being on the brink of a $15,000/year raise (which was A LOT in regards to how much I was making at the time,) to earning $8,000/year TOTAL as an English TA.  I was taking my major and one of my minors and putting them to the side.  They were professional degrees, so they weren’t of all that much use to me in other fields or in life in general.

But perhaps the craziest thing is that I actually decided to put that career to the side because of lessons I learned while I was preparing for it.  Those four years in college, I learned more about who I was and what I wanted.  I took the university’s ideas of service to others to heart.  I had been changed in the best of ways, and I simply could not be okay living a life that was directed by money and the bottom line.  I needed more.

And it was one of the best decisions of my entire life.  Because of that decision, I had a career that I was incredibly passionate about.  I was helping people on a daily basis and I was helping to give students (many of them poor and many of them first generation Americans) a chance in this world.  And now that I have kids, I am able to take time off and I can go back in the future.

And so I’m in my thirties now, and I can’t say that I’m sitting back in quiet contentment having figured out this whole life thing.  Most days I feel like the world is spinning around me so fast that I might fall off.  Still I struggle with those questions about meaning and belonging and direction and purpose.  But when I look back ten years ago to me of 25, I’m happy with where I have come from and where I am going.

I don’t really know how this post came about tonight.  I wasn’t even going to write because I didn’t have much to say.  But as often happens, when I put fingers to keyboard, words started pouring out of me.

And I think it’s good.  I think it’s good to occasionally take a step back and look at where we were and where we are going.  It helps keep us focused and directed, and it helps us ensure that we are living life rather than letting life live us.

What decisions led you to where you are?  What were the pivotal moments in your life that led to this moment right now?  What values have helped shape you into who you are now?

People lament aging.  All the time we hear of people lying about their age, trying to hide the scars time has etched into their bodies.

And I think I’m weird because I don’t do that.  My past holds many memories that are dear to my heart.  But nothing can compare to the us that is left when life has started to wear away some of the rough edges.  Those same years that take away our youthful energy and our unrestrained freedom leave us with lives that are more authentic and more us.

Wisdom can’t be bought.  Wisdom can only be gained through the experiences life has in store for us.  Some of those experiences were tough to live through, but in the end, I am grateful for every battle scar I have because they remind me that life is about seasons and putting one to sleep as we move forward into the next.

To me, aging isn’t about giving up youth.  It’s about gaining years.  And I’m proud of what my 35 have taught me thus far.

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