What Matters

One of the nicer things about getting older is gaining perspective. If you haven't found that age has been helping you gain perspective, I highly recommend looking into it. What mattered on my 31st birthday was different than say, my 21st. No need to get a large group of friends together to celebrate- I love my friends and feel loved all the time. My husband does nice things for me and shows his love regardless of the day. Like when I've been cranky and sick for the past two weeks and he has taken care of me. Like the day he got home from work early and made a huge pot of chili. I'm just generally happy to be me, and though there will always be room for improvement and growth, I am aware of who I am, who I used to be, and it's all good.

Another happy symptom of age or growth is the ability to let things go. I'm certainly not perfect at this, but it's much easier now to understand that many people I've invested in during my lifetime are just going to be temporarily part of my life. They were there and I learned what lessons I could, and then it's time to move on. I used to agonize over this (and still do some), about what it all means, about what cutting of ties would mean about my investment, or about who I am- but, as my best friend and I discussed recently, it's not a statement of any of that. We learn from each other (hopefully), and then we continue on with those lessons to hopefully be better than we were before. I think for most people, the scope of your social world starts to narrow as you become an adult, and that's not always a bad thing. You just hang on to the friends that you can pick up with at any point in time and enjoy what time you have with each other.

I worry that social media unhealthily makes us linger rather than moving on. (Read a great piece from the Times on how social media diminishes the quality of our social connections). The temptation to know what happened to people after your intersection with their lives is huge. Connections that really have ended a long time ago are still holding on by fragments through Facebook and the like. Not that it's bad to "keep in touch" this way, but it can also become the breeding grounds for showing off, comparing, and passive cyber stalking. It makes it hard to say what needs to be said (implicitly) sometimes: "I care about you and wish you the best, but we don't need to keep tabs on each other anymore. I free you from this obligation so you can live your own life more fully. I've learned from you and I hope you have learned from me."

ING sent me this video for my birthday, which I know is an advertising gimmick, but all the same, I thought it was sweet. Plus the paper tears are cute. So I'll end  this random rambling on this note: