On Turning 40: A Manifesto

Here’s my rule on my birthday: I only do things that make my heart say: hell, yeah!

I was a little surprised when my heart wanted to start the day writing (because I usually have to drag myself kicking and screaming to the page, though after I get there, I wonder why I fight it so hard). But I even went back for my little computer so I could sit in this coffee shop and write a bit about turning 40.

I was talking with two of my fellow seminarians, both women over 40, and one said she had called her Mom when she was 40 to ask if she would ever feel like a grown up. I laughed, because I have the same feeling. What does it mean, anyway, to be a grown up? I remember when I bought my house at 25 – part of me wondered: how is it that they are giving me all this money? Don’t they know how young I am? Later, when I had a professional gig in the big city, I kept thinking: don’t they know?? As many of my friends married and had children, I kept thinking, really? How did we get here?

Last night, a dear friend from Seattle came to visit me. I was trying to describe how I felt about turning 40. Now sure, it’s just another day in some ways, but I tend to think those “big” birthdays are a time to take stock, to review where I am and where I want to go. But I was saying: this is not where I expected to be at 40 – back in graduate school (again), single/unmarried, no kids, taking on extreme student loan debt. And seminary? Really? I said: I mean, I’m happier than I’ve been in a very long time, but it all just seems like I should be further along somehow. I figured being in recovery for so long, and therapy for longer, I shouldn’t be feeling so insecure, and I shouldn’t have to budget just to buy a new pair of boots.

Now, my friend is one of those women who is really successful – she is graceful, smart, loving, funny; and she’s beautiful, she has a great marriage and is doing very well in her downtown corporate gig. Later in the evening, out of nowhere, she pauses and says: You know it is because you’ve been in recovery (ie practicing this spiritual discipline) for so long, that you’re able to do this. She said: there is no way I could do what you’re doing, it makes me afraid just to think of it.

It was the best birthday gift ever.

I think I’ve spent so much of my life measuring myself against other people’s standards of success, I forget sometimes what is really important is learning your loves, and following what your love calls you to do, regardless of what it might cost and what it might look like. Maybe this is what I mean by being a grown up.

Coming to seminary, even if I couldn’t admit it at first, is the loudest “hell yeah” action I’ve ever taken. I came even though it seems crazy, even though it rocks everything that I thought I was, even though I suspect that it will makes my chances of having a hot lesbian love affair virtually nill. I’m here even though being here, and claiming Christianity, has complicated many of my previous relationships in ways I never would’ve guessed.

And I love it. And I love the idea of spending the rest of my life doing this work. Which is good, since I’ll be paying off my student loans till I’m 85. It doesn’t matter.

So here’s what I think I want for my 40s:
1. I want to never again apologize, equivocate, or dodge ownership of my life choices and the things I love.

2. For the big stuff, if it isn’t hell yeah, I’m not doing it. (There’s plenty of little things, like laundry, that just requires a:” yeah, I don’t want to wear dirty clothes or walk around naked.”)

3.Recognize, welcome and support other people in their “hell yeahs”

4. Stop judging my insides based on other people’s outsides.

5. Celebrate all the quirky things I love that make me, me.

So that’s what I want to say today. Now: a massage, shopping for shiny new boots, some deliciously lame romantic comedy, time with my dear ones, and a good deal of playing hooky.