Loving 42

Yesterday a friend asked how I was feeling about my birthday. She remembers the drama when I turned 35. I was no longer able to mark the "24-35" category. I was now obliged to check "35-44" and for some reason that more than anything meant middle age. Hot flashes followed within a few years, so I'd say the mid-life crisis complete with birthday sobbing on my 35th birthday was not entirely premature. Turning 40 was no big deal. Neither was this 42nd birthday. If history is any indication, I'd better plan something spectacular for 45 when I jump to the "45 to 54" category.

My response to my friend yesterday was that I feel like a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old. I feel like I've been spending the last few years getting ready to graduate. And I am in the confident, expectant place where the future holds open all possibilities. There's anxiety too. Well, not so much anxiety as a sense of being clueless about what lies ahead. Sure, I've got dreams and goals and watered down versions of "plans", but I'm really very close to the same place I was in the summer of 1983, the summer before my senior year of high school.

I knew I was going to college. A given. But where??? Probably UCLA. I was absolutely certain I would continue my love of math and science and become some kind of engineer. That was the thing in 1980's. If you were African-American and loved math and science, the engineering programs courted you.

In the end spontaneous decision-making sealed my fate. A friend of my mom's who heard I'd gotten in to Stanford insisted I had to go there. It would be stupid not to go there, he implied, forget UC Berkeley. Not a fan of being called stupid...When I got to Stanford and struggled in calculus, I was so delighted over my first and easiest college "A" that I switched my major to sociology so I could get more of that good feeling and less of the one that made me feel like a loser. In retrospect, I just didn't know much about discipline, sacrifice or nitty-gritty knuckle-down studying.

Impromptu. Spontaneous. I've so often made life-changing decisions based on a whim, a feeling. It hasn't been "wrong" and my life hasn't been terrible. I'm planning to experiment with choosing instead of just deciding. Not UCLA or Stanford, not what I expected to do versus what someone else says is better. This time I'm going into "senior year" with a real sense of Self. I've got an interest in choosing what I want from the field of all possibilities.

I took the Landmark Forum last weekend. It changed my entire perspective on life, on my life. That's a second entry coming soon. I'll be taking the next course in their series in November and will be attending a weekly seminar over the next few months as well. The seminar is on commitment. I can't wait to apply it to my Luzca book, to relationships...a wide open second act.

A huge thanks to all the wonderful well-wishing I received. Blessings!