Dear Diary—
I turned 40 this week.
And while I don’t suddenly feel wiser, I do feel like life has had to beat a few things into my head.
Some profound.
Some embarrassingly practical.
Here are a few lessons from the other side of 40.
Always get the damn gas.
It was the day before my birthday and I did what everyone does, and I am no exception. I saw the gas light go on and said to myself, “I’ll get it tomorrow.”
And then do you know what happened?
My first appointment ran late because rescheduling was a fiasco and by the time I looked at how many miles I had left in my tank I realized I would not make it home and back. It was no longer a choice — I had to stop making me late for my next appointment.
I cannot tell you how many times I have put myself in that position.
So, get the damn gas.
(Although truth be told I will probably spend the next decade following the same pattern before my bandwidth frees up enough that getting gas whenever it’s needed doesn’t feel like such a massive chore.)
You will always forget something important leaving the house. If you’re trying to remember more than three things, just make yourself a list.
This is a two-for-one special.
It’s pretty straightforward.
We all do it and we all beat ourselves up about it.
This isn’t weakness.
Modern adulthood simply requires too much mental bandwidth.
Nobody is dying because you forgot the reusable grocery bags…again.
Give yourself a break.
The Tupperware drawer will never stay organized.
Every single household complains about the Tupperware drawer because I think we all naively want it to behave like plates and bowls.
We want to set it and forget it.
We want it to stack nicely.
We want every pair to magically stay together forever.
But it doesn’t operate like plates and bowls.
It operates more like a thousand-piece puzzle where every piece has a match and the puzzle itself changes shape depending on last night’s leftovers and who brought home their lunch containers intact.
And we all believe we are one life hack away from solving its mystery permanently.
Stop trying to find the perfect cupboard or organizational system for Tupperware and just accept that every few weeks you need to rip the whole thing apart and put it back together again.
Honestly…there’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere (a future entry I think).
The fewer hills you have to die on, the less battles you’ll be in.
I guess this is a variation on the oldie but goodie, “choose your battles.” But what I think the original misses is the value it brings to choosing those battles AND the posture from which it comes.
Choosing your battles doesn’t only mean gritting your teeth about the battles you choose not to wage. It means deciding they are not what matters most. They are not worth the battle scars, both personally and relationally.
Not everything is worth your energy.
Not everything is worth the relational shrapnel.
Some things are better surrendered than won.
Usually people’s behavior makes perfect sense if you understand the context.
This one I learned in therapy. Not my own (although understanding my own behavior has certainly been an interesting side effect of the job), but learning to understand others.
After 10 years I live by this strategy in the therapy room:
“If I don’t understand why someone did something, try harder.”
Make the space safer.
Strip away judgment.
Ask the hard questions.
Rack your brain to make it make sense.
And what I’ve found is,
It always does.
That doesn’t excuse things, but it explains them.
Even behaviors that feel unexplainable, inexcusable, or shameful.
And I’d put my last dollar on the fact that most of it is rooted in some combination of fear or pain.
Humans don’t react well to fear or pain.
We do all sorts of damaging, confusing, shame-filled things trying to manage or rid ourselves of this disastrous duo.
Again, not an excuse.
But sometimes understanding softens the blow.
Patience is the kindest thing you can offer another person.
I noticed something only very recently.
People rush other people.
In traffic.
In grocery store lines.
Finishing a text message.
Trying to explain something.
I’ve been on both sides of that equation — irritated because I needed someone’s help right now, and rushed while trying to help, make myself available, or simply get out of the way.
The latter feels awful.
That’s when I realized that most of the time, all I actually needed was patience.
And honestly? Usually not even that much.
Usually only two minutes.
Two minutes to regain my balance.
Two minutes to finish shifting gears.
Two minutes of unhurried space.
So I started making my own shift whenever I felt that irritation rise up.
“I can give this person two minutes.”
Nothing is so dire that I can’t offer someone two minutes of my patience.
And interestingly, I noticed my own nervous system settle too. Less tension in the moment. Less tension between us. The relational connection didn’t take a hit because of my impatience.
That’s when I started realizing how often patience is the behavioral expression of kindness.
Not grand gestures.
Not perfectly worded responses.
Just offering another human enough space to regain their footing — whether that’s a stranger in traffic or your daughter finishing her text.
Children are an entrustment, not property.
I learned this from a client and it has stayed with me ever since.
I have absolutely succumbed to that insidious yet natural instinct to view my children as part of myself. That their behavior and character are not only reflections of me, but reflections of my performance as a parent.
And honestly, society reinforces this all the time.
“Where are the parents?”
“Some people’s kids…”
And yes, parents absolutely have enormous influence in their children’s development.
But at the end of the day, they are still their own humans.
They will tell their own stories about life.
Carry their own perspectives.
Make their own choices.
We can offer love, values, routines, repair, and guardrails.
But they are captains of their own ships, as they should be.
Never be the first one to end a hug.
I remember reading the research about humans needing something like 8 hugs a day and feeling something in my nervous system immediately exhale.
Like,
“Yes. That’s exactly what I need.”
And then came the realization that I probably rarely get 8 hugs a day…and I’m a hugger.
Most of us are probably operating in a deficit of physical human connection.
That’s when I made the commitment to squeeze all the value out of every hug. To let myself fully settle into it and quietly communicate to the other person, “I’m here with you for as long as this moment needs.”
Love and loss are two sides of the same coin.
We all think we can separate them. We’re all surprised to find them in the same place every.single.time.
And yet there they are.
A pair.
Two peas in a pod.
A yin and a yang that absolutely cannot be separated.
If you love, you will lose.
Or in other words, if you care about something, it has the power to hurt you.
People.
Relationships.
Dreams.
Passions.
Versions of life we hoped would stay forever.
It matters (hurts) because it matters (love).
It is the brilliance of Pixar’s Inside Out — Joy and Sadness finding a way to coexist. Much suffering comes from trying to weed out sadness for the sake of joy.
A fool’s errand, my friends.
You can do everything right and shit may still hit the fan.
This has been a looooooong road for me and I’ve gotten a few hard knocks along the way to this one.
I am a walking recipe for perfectionism— the American Dream bullshit that says anyone can [fill in the blank] if they just work hard enough, being an eldest daughter (the only in fact), and a therapist. Welcome to my little chamber in hell dedicated to overthinking and overfunctioning.
This lesson is a hard pill to swallow, and somehow I’m still delusional enough to believe I’ll be the one and only human to defy this universal truth.
You can conceptualize, plan, and execute perfectly. You can think ahead of every disaster scenario. And because we live in community with other humans and there are things in this world bigger than us, life can still turn sideways.
We can still be delivered curveballs.
Other people can still make choices that impact us.
Life can still hurt.
Do the best you can with what you have at any given moment, in a way that is authentic to you and your values.
Then leave the “what ifs” and “should haves” buried in the ground where they belong.
There aren’t any cookie cutter solutions or tricks to being human.
We’re all trying to find the magic bullet.
For healing.
For relationships.
For parenting.
For happiness.
For life.
But humans are dynamic.
People are dynamic.
Relationships are dynamic.
Capacity is dynamic.
What works one season may not work the next.
We have micro and macro changes as we move through this life, making it impossible to say this one thing [solution, skill, strategy, method] will work every time.
Certainly not for every human.
But honestly, not even for the same human at a different time under different circumstances.
Yes, there are patterns.
Things that work most of the time, for most people.
Or things that work most of the time for a certain person.
But life is too fluid for rigid formulas.
The older I get, the more I think awareness and attunement, flexibility and improv are the only strategies worth continually coming back to.
Maybe that’s what aging is slowly teaching me.
Not perfection.
Just a little more softness toward being human in the middle of life on planet Earth.
Sincerely –
A therapist who’s human too
