33 Years Young

IAs I ran along the beach yesterday morning, passing my fellow anonymous sunrise joggers and walkers, we waved and smiled at each other (which is one of the things I love about this little town) and I had the thought - they don’t know it’s my birthday.

And then I realised I never know whether it’s their birthday, either. This was followed by the nice thought of how it would be if we always greeted others as if it was their birthday.

This nice thought followed me for a little while until I was distracted by my burning calves from too much barefoot running, my aching thighs from riding a bicycle with flat tires for (maximum) twenty minutes on the weekend, and my worries about how my yoga practice will go this week because of my (self-diagnosed) tricep tendinitis.

Then it hit me that my body is 33 years old, and thus it is for sure starting to age, my friends are having babies around me and I’m kicking and screaming because I still feel like I’m 25, even though I’m not long off being ‘mid-thirties’ and my cat is one of the most important people in my life and I insist on calling my cat a person and an ideal celebratory evening is spent sitting on the beach with friends at sunset, no longer preparing for a night out on Oxford street.

But I think, or I hope, that I am a little bit more at peace with myself, and the world, than I was at 25. And perhaps this is the gift of aging, should we master doing so gracefully.

Last year I wrote something about how I’d like to bring you all cake, like we did in kindy on our birthdays. The sentiment is still very much alive 💜.