meditations on being thirty
I have decided (or rather it has come to me, as I did not contemplate anything in order to come to it) that thirty is the best age so far. In fact, it didn’t only come to me once. It comes to me often. It happens when we are buying fruit and we decide only to buy two nectarines to make sure that we eat them before they go bad. It happens when we are looking at french brie cheeses in Westside market, dreaming of that delicious creaminess but knowing that $7 really too much for us to spend on everyday cheeses. It comes to me on my way home from work at 4 pm, knowing that I will spend the whole next day with Peter.
It seems to me that things have settled into a good pattern - but not a resting pattern. Things are coming together, stewing, waiting, preparing. I love this feeling, but also I find that I am happy right now. It is really very exciting but it is hard to explain exactly what it is. I will try to do it like this:
1) I love to cook. I love to come home at four, open the recipe, slowly start to prepare ingredients. Maybe trying something new. Maybe something old. Cutting the onion, setting it aside. Heating the spices, setting them aside. Getting ready. Getting ready.
2) I love the taste of french wine. I never knew it before. Brie is the most delicious delectable thing. I never liked it before. Lentils, with hot peppers, are out of this world. Amazing.
3) I love having a job that I like. Yesterday was the best day ever at my job so far - we met with some youth workers and youth about a summer program where youth research a problem in their community and then design and implement a project to address it. I will be working with them. I love it. I love the research. I love kids. I love that I may get to design a day training program for a group of teenagers!
4) I love trying to improve some part about myself and actually doing it. I decided to strengthen my stomach muscles. I have decided this many times before - but it always turned into this thing where I felt worse because I wanted to do it but never did it. Well, NOW, I am doing it. I get up EVERY MORNING and do 20 minutes of exercise. I can do it because I developed a new philosophy and practice. The philosophy is I don’t have to do it if I don’t want to. [aside: rereading this before sending it, I realized that this is exactly Peter’s philosophy. I didn’t develop it. I borrowed it.] It is not a compulsion. Amazingly, this enables me to actually do it. Instead of having a regiment, I just have the time. The same thing is true with studying Russian. I am now studying at least one hour everyday. I can do it every day for the same reasons I can do sit ups: I don’t have to. It feels really great.
5) I love listening to music. I feel that in the past couple of years I have learned something completely different about music and art. I feel a real connection to it in a way that I never did before. This has been apparent to me in music for some time, as we go to so many concerts and are always listening to music at home. But I didn’t realize it spilled over into art as well until we were in Paris going to the museums. One of our favorite things in Paris was the modern museum in the George Pompidou center. I never liked modern art before. It irritated me. But this time was completely different. I felt connected to it - whether I liked it or hated it. I understood somehow that it connected to me, my life, my times, my generation. I understood something about why we have this art now and not the art they had a hundred years ago. This may seem like a strange thing - but to me it feels really really important. Somehow I shed that crushing societal pressure to go to the museum to appreciate “great” art - which is actually completely alienating to me because I just don’t understand why one piece of art is great and another is not. And in not understanding, I feel alienated. Great for what? for whom? When you look at modern art - it almost makes the question of what is “great” ludicrous because it is all so different and extreme and strong and unbudgeable. I love that. I LOVE that. So in finding a connection to this kind of art - I also found the freedom to look at art in my own way.
6) And not least at all but the most important, I love being married to Peter. All of these things find their foundation in us together. Shopping, looking at art, cooking, happiness in work, listening to music. Being married is the most mind-blowing thing that ever happened to me. The merging of two into one but still being two. As they would say in Zen “You are not one, but you are not two.” I can understand how you could meditate on this statement for 100 years. We spent a great week together in Amsterdam, Paris and Wuppertal. We walked, we talked, we explored, we searched, we ate, we sat, we argued, we laughed, we shared. We were excited, happy, tired, exhausted, thirsty, inventive, wondering, amazed, irritated, sleepy, together. Its like an intense tiny replica of life. We are building together, trying to find out what we really want with our lifes. Who do we want to be? What do we want to be? We are building it right now, right here. I love it. I love him.
That is why thirty is the best age so far. I don’t know why people long for youth - it seems like it just gets better. Won’t it be great to be 40… I can’t even imagine. I can’t even imagine. Life is magnificent.