Heyyy folks! I'm fresh out of my big birthday weekend. And I'm officially forty now.
Forty and rocking - that's how I feel in my head. Heck! I don't even feel older than my twenties in my heart. Forty and looking hopeful - is what I expect of this coming decade. I feel this decade will be a make or break one for me. There are so many hopes and aspirations struggling to find a foot hold in my head, but how far on a limb I may go to grab them will be the thing to see.
Don't kill me just yet, but I have been feeling forty for over a year now (yep, I know people run a mile before they'll accept this number)...in a good way that is. If time is relative then growing old wouldn't conform to calendar months now would it? So it was too for me. At 39 I felt very forty. So now when I did turn forty how did it feel? Well for one, it was just another day and my friends, the ones who obligingly turned forty earlier than me, were kind and absolutely sweet and mature in welcoming me. So yeah I think it must feel like after the penny drops. It must feel a bit like "oh, I've been there, done that," or "I don't want to do this because I know that I will regret it later." Forty sure did look a more mature milestone for me.
As I said, I felt particularly mature and well-heeled last year, especially after acquiring certain life saving skills like making my own idli batter after 39 years. Yeah. I can like fix the grinder up, add in the soaked rice and urad dal mix and get the ground stuff out in the right consistency so that fluffy idlis result. This is the closest I have come to making something from the scratch. And I did it last year...after 39 years of living in this earth; after devouring countless idlis and dosas with hot sambar and chutney. Now I don't have to rely on mum's batter or the store bought one, I can make my own. And you thought I was joking.
I have had a year to think about this birthday and plan how I wanted it to be. Part of this musing was due to the hype that surrounds milestone birthdays these days. I swayed between not doing anything at all to going for a trip somewhere with S and Anahita. I also thought about what would make it special and commemorative. Would completing a few must-dos-before-I-kick-the-bucket things have made the day count? So I listed a few things that I would want to start off or complete before I hit forty. I didn't do any. Lol. Somethings never change, I realized.
Meanwhile many other things started happening which I had never done in my life (making idli batter included) and which were setting the course for the coming decade.
The most important being adopting a healthy lifestyle. I have tried setting Anakutti on one from the day she entered this world. A whole host of probabilities was out of my hand (pollution, pollution, pollution) but I could to some extent control and help her adopt a healthy life style and I stuck to that. But I haven't pursued a very healthy lifestyle myself. I was not losing much weight nor was I taking care of my diet very much. From last year, thanks to S's earnest efforts to adopt a healthy lifestyle for himself, I found myself falling in line too.
Still if I had to associate turning 40 with one word, that would be "Acceptance."
1. On those few days that I start late to work and I get a crappy taxi driver, who shouldn't have been given a licence or let anywhere near a car, who breaks like he is desperately exercising his foot muscles, who thinks finding gaps in traffic is below his dignity, whose speedometer never goes above 40kmph - no point busting my nerve or getting my BP high in willing the car to reach my destination on time. Acceptance.
2. After following this particularly effective intermittent fasting plan and see the weighing scale stand stubbornly at my earlier weight (no, I am not disclosing that. Zip). Acceptance.
3. If a person you love says something unfair that you expect of him/her to have changed/ understood about you in all the years you have known them and they don't - Acceptance.
4. This has happened to me a lot before I adopted this attitude of Acceptance. I have noticed how I used to feel small when my best efforts went un-noticed or unappreciated. It was hard to let the credit go to someone else. But now I swear, things have gotten better. People are noticing, credit for work given and even if they don't I find myself moving on. Close my eyes, breath deeply and think - acceptance.
5. Things I don't have control over - traffic, people's attitude, rapes, murders, war, unrealistic expectations of others, poverty - Acceptance.
6. That it was way later than when my dreams of owning a small bungalow, with a lush garden and a puppy/dog or two running about and a cat curled up on my feet, with a study where I can write to my heart's content should have materialized - Acceptance.
7. On the odd days that I ditch the taxi and take my bike to work and harbour thoughts of how incongruous I must be looking in my corporate attire and riding a bike or of how I feel the need to justify to people who ask how I commuted (yes they do ask). I wanted to say without a hint of self-consciousness that I had come by bike. Yes. I knew I turned 40 in my head when I stopped caring and started doing just that and seeing their reactions to my answer. Let them handle that. Acceptance!
8. Think I have lost weight and eagerly try a dress a size smaller only to find a muffin top/ barrel shaped me looking back in the trial room. Act nonchalant while the heart breaks just a little. Yes, but mend it with "acceptance." Voila!
And I could go on about all the disappointments or troubles that life dishes out which would be better met with the "acceptance" mantra. There are plenty of it believe me which I might just remember after I have posted this blog. So I'll stop with the above 8.
This decade, however, I'm going with the word "Hopeful," tempered by Acceptance. Hopefully, that should get me through the forties.
Forty and rocking - that's how I feel in my head. Heck! I don't even feel older than my twenties in my heart. Forty and looking hopeful - is what I expect of this coming decade. I feel this decade will be a make or break one for me. There are so many hopes and aspirations struggling to find a foot hold in my head, but how far on a limb I may go to grab them will be the thing to see.
Don't kill me just yet, but I have been feeling forty for over a year now (yep, I know people run a mile before they'll accept this number)...in a good way that is. If time is relative then growing old wouldn't conform to calendar months now would it? So it was too for me. At 39 I felt very forty. So now when I did turn forty how did it feel? Well for one, it was just another day and my friends, the ones who obligingly turned forty earlier than me, were kind and absolutely sweet and mature in welcoming me. So yeah I think it must feel like after the penny drops. It must feel a bit like "oh, I've been there, done that," or "I don't want to do this because I know that I will regret it later." Forty sure did look a more mature milestone for me.
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| I largely learnt this from my +40 girlfriends |
As I said, I felt particularly mature and well-heeled last year, especially after acquiring certain life saving skills like making my own idli batter after 39 years. Yeah. I can like fix the grinder up, add in the soaked rice and urad dal mix and get the ground stuff out in the right consistency so that fluffy idlis result. This is the closest I have come to making something from the scratch. And I did it last year...after 39 years of living in this earth; after devouring countless idlis and dosas with hot sambar and chutney. Now I don't have to rely on mum's batter or the store bought one, I can make my own. And you thought I was joking.
I have had a year to think about this birthday and plan how I wanted it to be. Part of this musing was due to the hype that surrounds milestone birthdays these days. I swayed between not doing anything at all to going for a trip somewhere with S and Anahita. I also thought about what would make it special and commemorative. Would completing a few must-dos-before-I-kick-the-bucket things have made the day count? So I listed a few things that I would want to start off or complete before I hit forty. I didn't do any. Lol. Somethings never change, I realized.
The most important being adopting a healthy lifestyle. I have tried setting Anakutti on one from the day she entered this world. A whole host of probabilities was out of my hand (pollution, pollution, pollution) but I could to some extent control and help her adopt a healthy life style and I stuck to that. But I haven't pursued a very healthy lifestyle myself. I was not losing much weight nor was I taking care of my diet very much. From last year, thanks to S's earnest efforts to adopt a healthy lifestyle for himself, I found myself falling in line too.
Still if I had to associate turning 40 with one word, that would be "Acceptance."
1. On those few days that I start late to work and I get a crappy taxi driver, who shouldn't have been given a licence or let anywhere near a car, who breaks like he is desperately exercising his foot muscles, who thinks finding gaps in traffic is below his dignity, whose speedometer never goes above 40kmph - no point busting my nerve or getting my BP high in willing the car to reach my destination on time. Acceptance.
2. After following this particularly effective intermittent fasting plan and see the weighing scale stand stubbornly at my earlier weight (no, I am not disclosing that. Zip). Acceptance.
3. If a person you love says something unfair that you expect of him/her to have changed/ understood about you in all the years you have known them and they don't - Acceptance.
4. This has happened to me a lot before I adopted this attitude of Acceptance. I have noticed how I used to feel small when my best efforts went un-noticed or unappreciated. It was hard to let the credit go to someone else. But now I swear, things have gotten better. People are noticing, credit for work given and even if they don't I find myself moving on. Close my eyes, breath deeply and think - acceptance.
5. Things I don't have control over - traffic, people's attitude, rapes, murders, war, unrealistic expectations of others, poverty - Acceptance.
6. That it was way later than when my dreams of owning a small bungalow, with a lush garden and a puppy/dog or two running about and a cat curled up on my feet, with a study where I can write to my heart's content should have materialized - Acceptance.
7. On the odd days that I ditch the taxi and take my bike to work and harbour thoughts of how incongruous I must be looking in my corporate attire and riding a bike or of how I feel the need to justify to people who ask how I commuted (yes they do ask). I wanted to say without a hint of self-consciousness that I had come by bike. Yes. I knew I turned 40 in my head when I stopped caring and started doing just that and seeing their reactions to my answer. Let them handle that. Acceptance!
8. Think I have lost weight and eagerly try a dress a size smaller only to find a muffin top/ barrel shaped me looking back in the trial room. Act nonchalant while the heart breaks just a little. Yes, but mend it with "acceptance." Voila!
And I could go on about all the disappointments or troubles that life dishes out which would be better met with the "acceptance" mantra. There are plenty of it believe me which I might just remember after I have posted this blog. So I'll stop with the above 8.
This decade, however, I'm going with the word "Hopeful," tempered by Acceptance. Hopefully, that should get me through the forties.
Comments
enjoyed the post!
Sarah