Notes at 35
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There’s an intuitive expectation that reflecting is a calming exercise, that the sorting and shelving of thoughts should leave behind a clean room that new, improved thoughts can now inhabit. My brain in the last year, before and after turning 35, has been disproving, or maybe nullifying at best, that hypothesis. It’s been a struggle to maintain emotional equilibrium, and to not allow the messy web of worries and fears to overwhelm. What little I know of the human condition tells me that some, or even a lot, of this could be a function of my age. If that’s true, I probably am not alone in experiencing it, so here’s an attempt at sharing the chaos that I’ve periodically attempted to articulate in my iPhone Notes app. I feel particularly vulnerable sharing this post, but perhaps that’s a sign that it’s worth sharing. Perhaps instead of feeling isolated and alone in our vulnerability, we can take solace in going through it all together.🧡
This is a little different than what I’ve shared in the past, so I’d love to hear if it resonates with you. As always, thank you for reading. I hope you have a great week ahead!
XO Sushmitha :)
It’s felt as though the weeks and months leading up to my 35th birthday have been compressed into a hourglass, time a tight compression of sand that flows too quickly and easily even through a very narrow hole. The hour itself, when it arrived, felt imbued with a fleeting, ephemeral yet momentous significance. A single day on which a previously long, seemingly unending window of biological normalcy and reproductive freedom abruptly starts to shut close. I know I’m being dramatic, I’ve read what the science says, it’s not as final as all that. Still, I can’t shake off the jittery sense of urgency accompanying this birthday, and I only partly am not serious when I joke with friends that I feel like a can of tomatoes expiring.
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I’ve watched in the elders in my life a somewhat linear relationship develop between their age and their disavowal of material desires, such that they do not want much more than what they need as they grow older. I had expected for this to begin to happen to me in my 30s, but in full opposition, I created quite seriously a Buy List just yesterday. After spending most of my adult life on a tight academic budget, I catch myself wonderstruck lately at having a small but very real disposable income. I’m just now getting comfortable participating in the capitalist society I live in, occasionally even embracing the new desire to fill my life with the things that cost money that I love. I pride myself on being a conscious consumer, but on the point of consuming itself- I want it all. A beautiful home, more pretty clothes, more trips to more incredible places. More massages, and not for muscle recovery but for frivolous relaxation, please! Luxuries are welcome, Beauty is joy, and none of it is going to be denounced anytime soon.
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It must be true for all of the millennia of humankind that have preceded me by now, and yet it seems like a singular experience that only I must be going through, that the joy of every birthday is dulled by the fact that the people dear to me are celebrating another one of their birthdays too. To be in my 30s is to suffer the hypochondria of having aging parents and if we’re lucky, grandparents, that no amount of gratitude, abundance, manifestation, etc. can relieve. I’m a critically thinking, trained scientist, but I’m not not spending some of my time envisioning a world in which a magical youth elixir exists.
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Staring at a 300 year old olive tree in the Baja mountains and admiring the beauty that time has attributed to it, I was reminded of the hypocrisy with which we view age. We preserve and protect old trees, buildings, things, study and archive and label them as historical, antique. Beautiful and of character, as evidenced by my own intentional investment in the vintage furniture dotting my home. On our own selves though, we try every which way to erase the effects of time, disappearing lines and wrinkles and scars with a hundred different tools and techniques, as if they’re not evidence of a life lived, of character. I’m at an age now when the grays and the lines are starting to become undeniable. Vanity used to be a vice, now I call it a virtue when I look in the mirror and am able to love who I see.
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When I was younger, I used to think that the key to leading a richer, fuller life was spontaneity. I thought that it was destined for the type of carefree, free-spirited, bohemian spirit that seemed to inhabit the internet’s most photogenic corners. I berated myself for my natural over-planning, spreadsheet-making tendencies that I believed robbed me of being one of them. I still apologize for it sometimes, but mostly, I don’t because I’ve learned that the opposite is true- it is in fact the careful planning and research and thoughtful execution ahead of time that awards the present with an unbothered je ne sais quoi. When past me has found for future me the the best experiences to take home from travels, present me can leave her phone untouched and be a fully present, dare I say even occasionally spontaneous, girlie.🫶🏽
I’ve realized on recent trips that there is a special freedom to only packing a carry-on for a longer period, and it isn’t related to bypassing baggage claim. I found that the simplified decision-making of getting dressed refreshed me, and I enjoyed that it simultaneously forced me to get creative with mixing and matching, adding fun accessories and repurposing a piece or two. In the age of social media where carefully curated looks and dramatic effect are the currencies that the chic population trades in, to pay minimum attention to the act of dressing and reallocate it instead to perfecting the ratio of butter and jam on perfectly crisp bread at breakfast, feels like a rebellion to relish.
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Now that I’m in the ballpark of my parents’ age in my earliest memories of them and a parent, albeit to the world’s best pup, I find myself constantly thinking of their thoughts, feelings and experiences raising a young me. I think of the fortitude of their affection day in and out, their determination to raise a family while building hard-earned careers, watching their spare time dwindle along with their personal interests and storage space. I try to imagine their everyday conversations on what’s for lunch or dinner, who’s running errands, what to watch on tv and where to go on Sundays. I wonder if their mundane everydays felt like mine do now- riddled with a dichomotous need for time to slow down so I can savor the now and speed up so I can get to the exciting laters.
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I used to have a blanket dislike for organized religion in my early scientific years, but now I view it with a distanced empathy, it’s existence something to be grateful for for its impact on loved ones. Michelle Zauner articulates it perfectly in her memoir, Crying in H Mart, when she refers to her mother’s Christianity as a language. To me too, religion feels like a language I can’t speak myself but others in my life do and very well too, with fluency and in long conversations packed with comfort and solace, embellished with colloquialisms in a way that only a native tongue can be. I’ve learned some helpful phrases and rely on signs when needed, like I do with any other language I don’t know.
On a related note, it’s taken a long time but I may be at the point of accepting that I will always and constantly be that South Indian flailing about in the murky waters where culture and religion overlap. I make renewed promises to myself each year to stay committed to my roots, lighting diyas at Diwali, cooking a feast with the now familiar recipes for Ganesh Chaturthi, wishing my family for Dussehra, all the while assigning my own interpretation to each festival and altering them from their origins to the point that I’m pretty sure they are finally only wispy peripheral branches of branches of my roots anymore. I mourn this, but I cannot figure out any other way.
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As per 2020 statistics on life expectancy, the Indian woman lives up to 70.15 years. Even if I exceed it because of lifestyle, genetics, etc. I’m pretty close to having lived my life halfway through. When I think of this, it sends me into a weird panic, a spiral of what I could have done differently, what I need to urgently do now and in the future for this timepoint to be justified and validated. I feel frustrated about my legacy, a concept that I haven’t even vaguely decided matters to me yet but yet feels important. I feel an overwhelming sense of being too far behind, and an inexplicable sense of confusion at how I will ever catch up to I don’t even know what or where. It is complete chaos when I go down this line of thought. I feel that what helps me is to live every day like its my last, and pack my life to the brim with an intentional focus that brings me and the people around me joy. Doing this seems like too little sometimes, and too much at other times.
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There are some two-sided coins that I’ve been thinking a lot about when ruminating on my personal brand and content creation- What content do we call inspired & what do we call plagiarized? When does aspiration become dissatisfaction, and worse, envy? It’s been hard to find satisfaction in my creativity knowing that nothing is original, that everything I create is a product of my consumption. I worry that sharing fun vacations and cool outfits is feckless and perhaps even immoral, my privileges an affront to those aspiring to them. I know that every person is responsible for their own self-preservation, but I also know that we as humans inherently seek to create something of value, something that adds value. What then, is the sum total of the value of my creations in this world- positive or negative? Sometimes I wish to create for the sake of art, without conflicts in my conscience interfering.
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Friendships are a strange creature at this time in my life, mercurial like relationships with family can never be and surprising like I had never expected before entering my 30s. I’m in awe of my female friends, I’m sometimes envious of my male friends. It used to be the other way around when I was a naive teenager. Sometimes when there are moments of silence during a conversation with friends, there’s a voice inside me that just says wow, wow, wow on repeat. What it means is that although I have known these people for a long time now, I’ve never known them at all as capable and beautiful and strong as they are now. Knowing people this way is a privilege I will never take for granted. ❤️
