Age is a funny thing.
When you’re a little kid, you look at adults and dream of being grown up. There seems to be a magic about it – staying up late, being the one who decides what’s for dinner, being able to drive and buy things and eat ice cream anytime you feel like it.
When you’re a teenager, you’re starting to feel self conscious and you’re searching for your identity and half the time you hate everything and you spend so much time wishing you were grown up, so you could feel at home in your own skin, know the answers to everything, and have life figured out. You want to grow up because there seems to be certainty and freedom there.
In your twenties, you have one foot in adulthood but you feel rushed, frantic to do everything and please everyone. You hustle and hustle and burn yourself out, dreaming of a future where you’re free from student loans, free from this seemingly never ending string of bad dates, free from worrying so much about what people think of you. You still dream of a future magic you who makes more money and gets married and buys a house and has kids. But you also start to look backwards, just a glance- and realize that there was a magic in that childhood where you were free – yes, you were free – in a different way. Free to run around and be silly and play dress up and play make believe. Free to be curious and ask your teachers all the questions and look at the world through the lens of Christmas stockings and birthday surprises. You realize as you’ve aged that you’ve taken on an invisible mantle of societal roles, bills, and all the adult stress of deciding “what the hell am I going to cook for dinner?!” and “new tires cost how much?!” and “how did the weekend go by so fast?!”
Then you reach your thirties. You realize midlife isn’t some faraway horizon and you look backwards even more. You realize that those beleaguered teenage years were magic too. That the magic was friendships blossoming and the safety of home before launching yourself into independence. That there was magic in an age where you’re on the cusp of so many new experiences – getting your driver’s license, your first kiss, your first afterschool job, your first school graduation, your first dorm room. It was in finding a CD of a new punk rock band you liked at FYE. It was shopping for your prom dress with your dad and your aunt teaching you how to put contacts in, and your mom making sloppy joes for your birthday.
Those twenties had magic too. Of course they did. You look back now, and reminisce about late nights out at bars with friends, and late nights writing papers for grad school. Back then you had better skin and a better metabolism. It was a time of finding your confidence in a career you love. Finding that you enjoy your own company, and don’t need to be with others to be content. Falling in love with coffee. Falling in and out of love, period. Learning so much about yourself with every relationship, and understanding what you really want in life. Finally having enough money to travel. Finding friends who you know are truly your people, who embrace you for the weirdo you are.
Age is a funny thing, isn’t it? We look forward so hard and squint into the future, dream of growing up for so long…until we gradually start to trade those rose-colored binoculars for nostalgic hindsight. We go from wanting to be older to dreading it.
Here’s what I’ve finally come to know. It’s taken me long enough to get here, and I know I’ll have to remind myself again as time marches on. There’s magic in the past. There’s magic in the future too. The biggest magic is now, in the present. Cheesy, right? But what’s better than that? I am an adult, who can drive and stay up late and choose what I want for dinner and eat ice cream on a Tuesday. AND I can also channel my curious, silly, imaginative younger self when I play Holi with my husband or play pretend with my niece or lose myself in a new book. I can buy things with my paycheck, and I feel confident in my career path, and I have the wherewithal to not hustle myself to the point of burning the candle at both ends anymore. There are shiny nights I stay up late or dance the night away at Silent Disco or go to Brooklyn for a concert, and there are also quiet nights where I choose to be in bed early with a book. I’ve got a lot of firsts behind me, but I’ve got a taste for adventure and a bucket list a mile long. I’ve been lucky enough to visit 22 countries, and yet there’s just as much joy in cooking a simple dinner with my husband, or going for a walk with a friend.
There’s the freedom I used to dream of but it’s different than you think it will be. I finally feel old enough to shed the weight of other people’s opinions and expectations, because I know who I am and what I stand for, and those closest to me do too. I have full agency over my own life, and my future, and even in the toughest days that life brings, there is immense joy, too. There are still Christmas stockings and birthday surprises. And there’s gorgeous sunrises on your drive to work and the smell of snow and a hot afternoon cup of chai…and, and, and…so many glimmers of magic. And by now I’ve learned that no one ever has everything figured out, not even us adults. There is never complete certainty except in trusting yourself enough to figure it out, whatever lies ahead.
No matter my age, I don’t want to get stuck only looking wistfully behind me – I want to channel the magic of my younger selves into now. And as I age, I don’t want to fear looking ahead either, dreading each birthday rolling around, nor waste my present dreaming of a magic future where everything is perfect. I want to live. Now.
Here’s 38. I’m here, and it’s magic ✨
Jill Came Tumbling After 