My thirty-four things

Thank you again, everyone, for your kind birthday wishes, which appeared in the comments here, on Twitter, on Facebook, by text and superimposed by laser on the moon.  Only one of these is a lie.  It was a lovely day.

When Ms. Sas turned thirty-five last year she made the post “35 things learned the last 35 years”, which format Miss MeganWegan repeated yesterday for our shared anniversary and her years thirty-one.  Shameless appropriator of others’ structures that I am, I thought I would adapt the same for my own reflections.  I have tied each scrap of knowledge to the age at which I learned it; thus numbers 1-5 reflect what I know from the first five years of life, and each number thereafter corresponds to the age it signifies.  Let us see how well I can cast my mind back to a life of big hair and long skirts.

1. There are people in your life who love you for being rather than for doing and these people, for better or for worse, are those who make your life’s foundations.
2. Food is as much about taste as texture.
3. The body’s inner workings are continuous and thus distracting.
4. Even as you look at others, others look at you, and very often judge you according to criteria of which you have no inkling.
5. Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you get always to stay with them; indeed, everyday life demands the opposite.
6. What you believe intuitively–for example, that you have broken your arm–carries greater weight with others if it is supported by empirical evidence or the ruling of those in authority, for example, a radiographer.
7. The standards to which others hold you may well be determined by contexts far removed and criteria not immediately apparent.
8. If there is something you enjoy, it is most fun to try and find ways to incorporate it into all kinds of other activities rather than make it your main focus.  (I’m aware as I write this that those whose enjoyments fall outside the bounds of law know this all too well.)
9. Don’t throw all your emotional energy into one friendship.
10. Confidence in public can be taken on from the outside like a hat or coat.  It doesn’t have to be a wellspring on which you draw.
11. The threat of puberty is about as bad as puberty itself.
12. When people around are stressed or in flux, alliances and networks are constantly reforming.
13. It is next-to-no fun being at the bottom of the hierarchy of a large institution, but if you are fortunate, some upward movement may be possible.
14. It is possible to be friendly and cooperative with people who come from the gender to which you are attracted.
15. Just because everyone around you is suffering from the same set of horrible acne challenges, doesn’t mean your relationship to one another will be that of mutual support.
16. The rewards of conforming to the expectations of those in authority are significantly more limited than those in authority promise.
17. There is an upper limit to how hard you can work, and if you don’t slow down before you reach it, you will hit it with full and devastating force.
18. There is much to be said for starting again, even if the opportunity is forced upon you.  A change of location, people and circumstances can provide the necessary fuel for remaking your life in better ways.
19. You cannot always have a fixed group of people around you, nor can you assume that you will be always be to them as once you were.
20. The relationship between younger and older adults is as fraught as the relationship between children and adults.
21. Living the life of the mind does not mean you can escape the laws of the body, especially those that relate to how much alcohol you can safely drink.
22. You need to take quiet care of your spirit of curiosity if you are to be a contented researcher in a big institution.
23. Virginia Woolf’s prescriptions for women’s work in A Room of One’s Own are as close to correct as it is possible to be in paragraph form.
24. You can’t be a glutton forever.
25. Owning a dog is a way to experience the world in a completely different manner.
26. People–family, friends, lovers, workmates–will not line up like ducks in a shooting gallery just because you want them to do so.  You cannot bend people by force of will to your idea of how things should be.
27. Heartbreak is hell not only in its intensity but also its duration: just when you think your suffering should be concluded, it steals the air from your lungs once more.
28. Once someone becomes paranoid, persuasive logic is a torment rather than a comfort to them.
29. A modest online profile can be a source of friendly writerly company.
30. It is not necessarily wise to throw a party in which people from different facets of your life freely mix.
31. There is self-esteem to be had from staying in your job long enough to know every detail of it.
32. Some of the lessons of heartbreak are false: happy love is possible for more people than believe in its existence.
33. The work of a good relationship is satisfying rather than debilitating.  With good fortune, love can renew itself daily.
34. Living long enough to be able to do what once seemed impossible is a further source of happiness.

And if such reflection seems on balance too dull and worthy, you may prefer an image I came across yesterday which seems to define the spirit of the times just as well:

Tagged as: birthday, reflection