I was just thinking about life at 36 years. I got bummed, exhausted, and then happy, almost all at once. It's a very strange mood. First I was bummed. I thought about how irrelevant a woman becomes to the trendy young crowd as she gets older. I thought about how her looks change to become something that is no longer desired by a youth-crazy society. In the fight industry, I'm in company with a very youthful crowd of early twenties. Lots of admiration goes to fast reflexes, muscle bound men, and hot ring girls. It's not ideally a place for a mid thirties woman to start out a new career. Wherever I turn, TV, magazines, and newspapers are always covering the young and their fabulous potential. I think I've been studying books and behind the desk of a corporation for so much of my adult life, that I actually missed out on the enviable life of the early twenties. I immediately went from 22 years of age to 45, socializing with senior engineers and middle aged executives. I'm just now trying to find myself at a time when most others have already found their place and direction. This new environment of young, young, and fabulously young is overwhelming me with temptation to think that I'm too old, or out of place, or even too un-hip to matter in life unless I'm raising a family.
That's when it becomes exhausting. just thinking about how much effort it would take to prove to the crowd at large that I too count in this world and I deserve some attention. Sheesh...almost not worth the effort. Maybe I should be a monk and meditate for all my waking hours.
That's when I become happy, in realizing that I do have the option to become a monk and meditate if I so choose. My freedom to choose has only just become apparent to me over the last year. I am free to experience, free to fail, free to meditate, and free to choose happiness. I had arrested myself for over a decade in a mental prison where I felt I had no choice. So rather than complain that life has changed since my imprisonment, I should celebrate my emancipation.
Are you getting bothered by being too old, too ugly, too fat, or too stupid? Well stop it...right now...stop it. Compare yourself only to the way you use to be, not to others. Your relevance is exactly how it should be, relative to you! Others may be inspirational, but they cannot be the measuring stick for your value in your life. Intuitively, you know exactly when you've been bad or been good. Don't let the ego start dictating your worth.
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2 comments:
You are SO not over the hill! First of all: you simply are still young. Second of all: you are now making conscious choices that are good for you. Something many people never do at ANY age. Third of all: in your supposed “old age”, you beat a well-known fighter at K-1 in Vegas a month and a half ago! If that's not in your prime, what is?!
Oh yeah! I am a bad ass, aren't I? Thanks for that vote of confidence.
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