Getting older

A milestone, like a birthday, can encourage us to evaluate our “place”, our “progress”, or our “purpose”. Often these parameters are passed down or perceived, by nature or nurture, and perhaps we are not even always aware of their presence in our life. And yet, we juxtapose ourselves against these parameters and evaluate our own worth based on an invisible measuring stick we have not clarified or even defined. So why do we classify our successes without even considering how our classification system works?

I work part time at a rehab facilitating group therapy, and I often revert back to “Box” groups: male/female gender box, healthy relationship box, success box, etc wherein which clients contribute what society deems appropriate about each and we write that in the box. What goes against society’s standards, we place outside of the box. We then evaluate the benefits of abiding by society’s standards and the repercussions of stepping outside of the box. Invariably, each group possesses people that have both similar and dissimilar ideologies, and inevitably leads to at minimum a discussion and potentially a re evaluation of what guidelines clients are tethering themselves to.

Because we are not present in group therapy on a regular basis, we do not regularly have the reminder to evaluate ourselves and have introspection. We have expectations we don’t discuss, a checklist of accomplishments we must attain before we can allow ourselves to enjoy life, or an extended list of “as soon as” requirements before we are enough. And if that wasn’t bad enough, we also measure ourselves against the even less clarified ideals of others: what is attractive, what is successful, and what is acceptable. And rarely is there a clear concept as to why we continue to pursue.

For example, as a single woman in her thirties with an independent lifestyle and a masters degree, managing both a private therapy practice and a part time group therapist position, it is typical to be asked how my romantic life is before my professional life. Women are often valued or deemed successful based upon their involvement with a partner, and thus a woman might let this subconscious pressure dictate her level of success, regardless of her awareness of that dictation.

The older we get, I find it imperative to get more and more curious with ourselves. It’s valuable to ask ourselves a lot of questions… What do I want? Why do I want that? What values of mine does that align with? Who do I want to be? Why is that important to me? So rather than letting discourses operate on us, why don’t we write the discourses we wish to abide by? And as we get older, and we continuously and involuntarily grow and change, why don’t we continue to rewrite these discourses?

I encourage redefining what it means to you to get older and incorporating what you want it to mean. Check out your standards, keep what you like and let go of what no longer fits. So here’s to getting older and to being exactly who YOU want to be.