“Ladies and…ladies, we are now on our final approach to 35. You may feel you know what birthdays are about, but I can assure you, you’ll want to buckle up for this one. Your flight over the last year on the approach to your destination may get a little turbulent, and you’ll want to let go of any pre-conceived notions of what this landing is going to entail.”
“If I have not consumed enough bacon and bourbon to make my lifespan somewhere in the range of 70-80 years old, I’ve probably not been doing it right.”
I know, for some of you, I need to backtrack a bit, and address that whole nefarious “mid” I’m associating with a “young-ish” age. But, I can assure you, that “mid” is both calculated and realistic. If, by the time I’ve reached “end” of life, if I have not consumed enough bacon and bourbon to make my lifespan somewhere in the range of 70-80 years old, I’ve probably not been doing it right (or at least not been doing it authentically). So, that would make 35 the first birthday where I may be conceivably able to claim I may be trending toward mid-life. Beyond that, I’m quite good at math (I was an honor student and an entrepreneur, you know), and I’m not on any waiting lists for bionic body parts, so I’m not trying to kid myself about still being bullet-proof and full of no worries. Hakuna Matata though, this isn’t a pity party; it’s a celebration.
What Race Are You Running?
“Any seasoned runner will tell you that it’s the emotional barriers that will break you during a long race, not the physical ones.”
Brace yourself, I like my metaphors, so today’s post will center around the semantics of running a marathon, rather than some insignificant and photo-friendly 5k. 5k’s are what selfies and 20’something life mottos are built upon…marathons require a different skillset. Everything pre-mid-life is more like that proverbial 5k. Its built around how it looks. You’re constantly looking sideways trying to see how people are reacting to you. You’re worried about your placement in the finishers’ log. This is the front half of your race. Its superficial, and the people who don’t have anything real to draw upon will end up calling themselves an Uber from the back half of the course just to get to the finish line to take a photo of themselves in their race t-shirt with their free beer. You will be jealous of them, but they won’t feel good about themselves, so who’s the real winner??
Part of this “mid-life” celebration of mine is the realization that I’m, at worst, somewhere around the mid-point of my life…and I’m in the middle of the pack. That’s like being 13 miles into a marathon. Unless you’ve done zero training in preparation for this moment, you can still rally to the finish.
So, we’re at mile marker 13.5. Halfway through the race. Some people do give up at this point, and decide that their story is already written…whether they finish or not, they’ll receive the T-shirt, and probably the post-race beer. But those who decide to grit their teeth and dig down into their core for the strength to go on might just find there’s more to finishing the race than the T-shirt.
I’ve found, in those races I’ve run, that the halfway point is where I start to realize that the months of training I’ve undertaken are paying off. My body is capable of gritting its way through another 13.5 miles, and my emotional training has also paid off, allowing me to keep pushing through a host of introspection that ends up feeling rather personal and painful during the last half of the race. Any seasoned runner will tell you that it’s the emotional barriers that will break you during a long race, not the physical ones.
The finish line of a big race is something that I can’t possibly describe to you if you havent experienced it. Crossing it is literally the culmination of an unparalleled amount of preparation and pain, and it ends up being worth every second of what it took to get you to that finish point, whether you’re breaking race records or coming in dead last. By the time you get to the point where you realize the race is personal and not just about the accolades you’ll receive when you finish, the photo worthiness of that moment doesn’t matter. It becomes a conversation with yourself. Some of my best self-realizations, and self-actualizations, have happened during this exact scenario, in the gritty back half of marathons. Rest assured, I have never finished first in any race (literal, figurative, emotional, literal, or categorical), and I probably won’t finish first in that life marathon either. That is more than ok with me…I’m proud just to say I’ve run the race without compromising who I am.
Who Are You Doing It All For?
“At the mid-point of my life, I’m in the middle of the pack, and I am still proud to be there.”
As I approach “mid” life, I find myself ruminating on this exact same emotional scenario. The first half of my race had a lot to do with selfies and training regimes and businesses and aesthetics. But, working my way toward mile marker 13, I realize there’s no one on the back part of the course but myself and those who are running the race with me. My outfit doesn’t matter, my race time doesn’t matter, and the relevance or the social stigma of the courses that I have trained in don’t matter. Out here, on the back half, its just me, the journey, and whatever I can find within myself to entice my old ass to finish this race. The bacon and the bourbon I’ll deserve at the end point doesn’t hurt either, and I’d sure as hell rather have those than beer and a T-shirt.
Life is not about being able to look back at an Instagram moment and know that you took a beautiful photo. Life is about feeling like you’ve done the training and found the support to finish the race. Its definitely not going to be pretty, but if you’re lucky and you’re able to find strength in who you are, you just might find that you are incredibly proud of yourself for persevering when there’s no cameras on the back stretch. It turns out, those are the moments you’ll probably most want to remember, even if they aren’t particularly photo-worthy. If you’re lucky, those miles and moments will mark where you found a reserve within yourself that no photo can capture.
Know That You Are Enough
Revel in your strength. Train for the back stretch. When you get there, the limelight will be off, and you’ll have no one to rely on but yourself, and if you’re fantastically lucky, maybe a race partner or two. But rest assured, even if you have a race partner, they’ll have their own emotional race demons they’re carrying through that back stretch…they’re only company, they’re not going to carry you to the finish line.
So, on the eve of my 35th birthday, as I’m exiting some of the turbulence on my ride toward that mid-point, I can only call myself lucky and very grateful for the training I’ve undertaken on the front stretch of my life. This is not a photo-worthy moment, it is just an honest and straight-forward mid-point. The last year has been bumpy to say the least, but if I can make it through these bumps, and still feel like I’m up for finishing the race, it doesn’t really matter where I place in the list of my “competitors”. I’m ready. Bring it on, life. My only competition is myself.
XOXO,
