Tag: maturity

Better Than This

I habitually make broad unclear distinctions between “little me” and “mature me.” The distinctions are often blurry and hard for me to act on in the moment.

I want to be a paragon of peace and tranquillity. I really do. However my troublesome and messy human tendencies frequently get in the way and foul up my plans.

I would love to spend the holidays awash in feelings of unlimited love and kindness that the season promotes. I really would.

So when an offhand remark hits me right in the gut and tears well up in my eyes, I am not at all good at dismissing the insult. I will, of course. But it will take time.

I have learned to manage disappointments in this way. I prepare to receive what I am pretty sure is bad news. The bad news lands. I absorb it and try not to react right away. That gives me time to feel and work through my uncomfortable reactions.

Sometimes I play a game in my head of timing how long it will take to for the negative feelings to subside and go away completely. I think about how I am likely going to feel the next day and in the coming days and calculate whether the insult has had sufficient impact to last until then.

Maybe it was an “it will only resolve next week” kind of insult. I am never 100% sure in the moment.

Whatever the time frame, I am forced to move through uncomfortable feelings with the hope and knowledge that they will eventually go away.

Part of me wonders why I can be so thin-skinned. A trauma history likely. My emotional boundaries often seem to be as strong as cheesecloth. Easy to penetrate.

Or maybe it’s because I missed the crucial development stage of learning self-regulation in my childhood. I’m working on it but like many other things taken up for the first time in adulthood, it is harder to learn and stick to.

It is Boxing Day. (When I was younger, I imagined that it was a special day when some sort of big and public pugilistic contest was regularly held.)

Since my day started off a bit rocky with a bit of an emotional boxing match, that minor altercation will define the day for me. I am still in deep insult processing mode.

The holidays are a special time of year certainly. They also take place in the midst of our regular day-to-day lives. The New Year approaches with its annual opportunity to think about the year gone by, let go of the old that we are happy to bid farewell to and welcome in the new… whatever we think awaits us.

I look forward to the annual changeover as I do every year.

I should be well past processing “little Margot’s” hissy fit of today by then.

The Birthday Box

Today is my birthday. A milestone, so that narrows it down some. But I am not going to share exactly how old I have become today. The reason is old-fashioned and likely a little vain. For my mother, it was a survival strategy. Especially in the workplace.

Mom used to talk about “the box people put you in.” Once people knew how old you were, she reasoned, they made assumptions. Often erroneous. Inevitably “limiting.” It is still the way it is “out there.” A 19-year-old singer on America’s Got Talent is viewed more favorably than a 27-year-old. Longer-term marketability, the younger they are.

In Mom’s case, she was a woman in a profession dominated by men. Truth be told in her generation, every professional field was dominated by men. There were a lot of truths about living in that reality, shared as sly witticisms that most women could relate to.

“To do as well as a man in the workplace, women have to be twice as good and work twice as hard as men do. Fortunately, that isn’t difficult.”

Or a more veiled reference: “It is hard to soar with eagles when I am surrounded by turkeys.” I remember a cartoon that circulated in Mom’s workplace. A down and dejected bald eagle is in the center of a group of blank-looking turkeys. The point hit home.

I knew the frustration of being expected to be a “hard news” reporter when that was the predominant role respected in our TV newsroom. If your strength was current affairs or my wheelhouse, human interest, you were clearly of less value than the ambulance chasers or political analysts.

Never mind that I actually enjoyed doing human interest pieces and that they were well-received. They were never going to grant me a shot at being a war correspondent or a bureau chief or heading up a newsroom.

Mom’s challenge was even harder in the 60s. There were distinct “ladies’ pages” in the newspaper business. And ladies, of course, were expected to “cover” issues of interest to other ladies. Teas, weddings, and significant births and deaths in the community. The social pages. Writing obituaries was clearly women’s work.

Mom fought for a “beat” like her male colleagues. After much cajoling and complaining she finally got her wish. She ended up covering the port of Saint John, New Brunswick with the comings and goings of major vessels and reports on the cargo they carried.

To my chagrin, she liked to announce to all and sundry when I was too young to see the humor that she had a job “working the waterfront.” The conjured image of my mother in fishnet stockings and too-high heels made me writhe in discomfort when she shared her little joke with my friends.

Today is more of a day of stock-taking for me. I look back on the other birthdays of other significant decades. I think about what I have and haven’t accomplished. Most poignant, of course, have been challenges that I did and those I did not overcome. Loss became a constant companion if not exactly a friend.

My dear friend Ursula Wawer, MD became a forensic psychiatrist. On a trip we once took, she seized upon a piece of art. It was a drawing of a maze of sorts with many paths but all leading ultimately to the same destination. She said at the time it was much like the healing path many of her patients took.

Not everyone comes to the same desirable destination of love, peace, and fulfillment via the same path. Ursula concluded it doesn’t matter how you get there. What does matter is that you keep putting one foot in front of the other. Do the work to eventually arrive where you want to be and not where others deem that you should be. That journey can take a lifetime.

And so it has been for me. Lots of learning along the way and many lessons I would rather have read about in a book instead of learning about them firsthand. Life isn’t fair and that is one of the biggest and most important learnings of all.

When you land at a point of your life at a destination you only once dreamed about, that feels like a life – if not consistently well-lived – then at least you can say it has been a life of some value.

As I “celebrate” my birthday today, just as you might be celebrating yours today or soon or certainly someday, that feels like the greatest present of all.

My life to date has been valuable to me for all the challenges, children, lessons, dear friends, adventures, and romantic experiences along the way.

I greet the upcoming decade with a warm welcome. Intention being about 99% of the success of any endeavor – another lesson I’ve learned. Bring it on. Happy birthday to me.