Becoming

do not fast forward into something you're not ready for. 

or allow yourself to shrink back into what's comfortable. 

growth lies in the uneasiness.  

the inbetween.  

the unfinished sentence.  

you are a season of becoming.         

Danielle Doby 

I turned 50 on Tuesday. 18,263 days alive as this incarnation of me.  I haven't tried, but I wonder how many of those days I can actually remember and given that the answer is precious few, why have I not been more selective in choosing the ones I've given head-space to?

For two thirds of my life I have allowed my feelings surrounding New Year and, as I discovered this week, birthday eves, to be coloured by a memory of a friend's mum dashing around at half past eleven on Hogmanay desperately trying to get the house clean before midnight.  It never actually instilled in me the habit of clearing out, just the notion that everything should be in order before the big day and that, when I failed to do this, I was destined to spend the next year playing catch up for at least the preceding year.

I heard recently about rethinking age as levels on a computer game designed to give some sense of achievement to the passage of time, that instead fills me with anxiety - a sense of fighting against my arrival on 'Level 50' because I haven't fully completed 'Level 49', nor 48, 47, 46 and so forth, right back to Level 17 when I first adopted this notion of not being ready that I would carry with me, unquestioned for so long.  

If I am to be grateful to lockdown for one thing this week, it is that FaceBook stopped putting ads on my timeline offering me the opportunity to go for a 'Fab at 50' makeover and photo shoot where, from what I can gather, pale foundation would be applied over the lines and creases on my face, I would be stood against a white background and then the exposure of the photograph would be set such as to blend my features even further into nothingness, whilst an off the shoulder bath robe and silk camisole would somehow make me appear alluring but it's unclear to whom?  Surely if my husband is the intended recipient he is fully aware of the reality of the situation, so perhaps it is for my benefit, to convince me that with a little bit of concealer and clever camera wizardry I can recreate the beauty of my youth.  Clearly there is a market here, but this side of being 50 holds no interest for me, the misplaced need for completion however, I feel needs more consideration.

What different ideals might I have lived by if I had arrived at my friend's house after midnight with the cleaning done and the party in full swing?  If, instead of using each birthday as a day of reckoning against which I couldn't win, I had relaxed into the celebration of me, not for who I was, or might have been, or might become, but for who I am.  To stop chasing my tail and regretting time gone and see instead what is right in front of me.  What if the 17 year old me had somehow picked up and carried the notion to meet herself where she was at?

I have watched my sons playing computer games when they were little, to race through to the finish and then go back, find and collect every single coin possible.  Life isn't like that.  There is only one way to complete the game, at which point you don't get the opportunity to go back and do all the bits you overlooked on the way. 

What absurdity on your birthday eve to treat the preceding year like it had a tick list of things to find, challenges to complete and lessons to learn, and to adopt a sense of melancholy that you didn't do all this within the allocated 365 days.  What an utterly incongruous way to live when the days you value most are those when you walked an untrodden path, found delight in spontaneity and got sidetracked on a whim that turned into something brilliant.

I reckon there must be in excess of 17,000 days that I have consigned to the unremarkable, not so my fiftieth birthday.  If I am grateful to lockdown for a second thing this week, it is for sharpening my focus on the things that really matter.  In the absence of the normal my friends and family went out of their way to ensure that I felt their love in ways that I will never forget.