#35.5: Flipping the Script

"And you may ask yourself, 'Am I right? Am I wrong?'"

Camille,

My experience going beyond my twenties?

Strange yet liberating.

It feels strange because you’re more acutely aware that you are surrounded by people who don’t speak your generational language; pop culture references fall flat when before, referencing a particular song or quoting The Simpsons would get laughs. Writing down those words - beyond my twenties - feels otherworldly (even though I am only a few weeks shy of my forty-first birthday).

But mainly, it’s increasingly liberating, because you realize that the “script” that hangs over us, those pages of Damocles, is rubbish.

When I was your age, I would run past houses after finishing at the school for the day, and smell, hear and see the happiness on the other side of the fences. The BBQ grilling, the people sparkling with laughter as they swirled glasses of wine on their patios. I would always wonder, and worry, that I had gotten it all wrong.

While we could argue that finishing school at 28 allowed me to get a job that allowed me to grill a steak once in a while, get my own place, it surprised me that the nervous energy about getting it all wrong still followed me to the other side of the fence that I now owned.

It was never those things, Camille. It was me.

I’m most assuredly a late-bloomer, an ever-evolving piece of work, and I needed my thirties to step outside of it all, shed ego, and re-evaluate all the things that the damn script told me were steadfast and true. It’s been about becoming more authentic to whoever I am, and to more gently make space for whoever I will be - Bryn, the person, and not any of the roles I may assume for a spell. To love myself, and give much less of a shit. It’s more raw, at times messy, but when you learn that it’s all improv, it becomes far more forgiving. (Therapy helps, too.)

(Lest I give false expectations, I do still worry: hoping I can have an impact, make a difference for someone. Mortality crystallizes those concerns inevitably as one gets older. According to Erikson, I’m right on time with my crises!)

Admittedly, your letter made me sad; it sounds like you’re worried that you’ve messed up, or are in your final act, because of your current happiness. And the script tells us that happiness is the outcome we earn only after a long life (of hard work, of course). That’s been my experience, too - this protestant view that we have to earn our happiness; that, until we’ve done the hard work, we’re not allowed to rest and enjoy ourselves. But I don’t think being content now means you won’t want to do more or do something different in one year, five years.

The thing is - and I hope this doesn’t come across as too maudlin - life is a moment, and how that moment lasts for each of us is decided by the genetic soup we’ve been given at birth, magnified or lessened by decisions we make (ugh, kale), and, honestly, pure luck. So why shouldn’t we find contentment and joy and fun in our current states? And by whose estimation does it have to be hard before it gets easy, or worse, that we then deserve happiness?

Never be tamed, Camille. Society wants to tame you because it fits its larger narrative and purpose, but your spark is a beautiful gift.

So what does being untamed mean to you, and where does your light want to take you?

Bryn xx

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Read Camille’s first letter: Can Someone Tell Me What Life Is Really All About?

Read Camille’s newsletter: Adult-ish

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