Member-only story
Self Reflection | 39 Years
This past weekend, I celebrated my 39th Birthday. It was a low-key affair; a nostalgic lunch, crème puffs & brownies, and hours spent in the yard and garden — planting, mulching, watering.
At one point, my wife looked at me and asked if I would have been pissed off about spending my special day doing domestic chores 10 years ago.
I laughed and said, “Yeah, probably!”
The exchange between us has stuck with me over the past few days as I’ve tried to put myself back in that time, just a short decade ago.
It’s nearly impossible to adapt the anger and insecurity I felt then to my current life, and for that, I am grateful. It signifies that I’ve somehow managed to move past that version of myself. It indicates that I am no longer harboring the resentment and hurt of my 20’s.
As the memories of my life swirl around my head, I think about a saying I heard a while back :
The days are long, but the years are short.
I think it is the perfect way to describe the passage of time.
I’ve read about a bazillion “This is what I’ve learned in X Years” articles, blogs, & social media posts. Some funny. Most cliché. None of them accurate or helpful to my personal experience. They’ve become another marker of the…
