Natalie
It is the last few days of the year and I have found myself listening to the popular showtune “Seasons of Love”. If you haven’t heard the song, listen here; I highly recommend watching the entire musical known as “RENT” as well. Per the tagline “How do you measure a year?” has got me thinking. The song suggests plenty of different ways you could measure a year, ultimately concluding to measure it in love. That’s an interesting approach.
As I get older, it’s not only how to measure those years but which years to measure is what I wonder about. The first year or two of your life there’s a litany of benchmarks to hit from motor skills to language milestones . Then, at around five years old for most, you start school and for the next thirteen years of your life everything is going to be measured according to grade level. You find yourself in school with people who are three, six, nine, maybe even 12 months younger or older than you. Six or nine months was once a HUGE difference and later it seems trivial.
Milestones then shift to things you finish. There’s a period where age doesn’t matter as much as it feels. You finish high school. You finish college. After that it seems we start to measure how far away you are from your goals. How many months or years has it been since you graduated? What have you done since then? I guess that’s why some people might opt to lengthen their education, taking an extra semester to finish. Another option I’ve heard described as “hiding out in grad school” for a program they may not even like.
There’s safety in education. Nobody ever faults you for being in school. For the first eighteen years of our life it is conveyed to be the most important thing in ones life.. No one ever got accolades for being a “high school drop out”. Sure there’s the .00001% that go onto become a billionaire but let’s be honest that’s the extraordinary exception not the rule.
We even celebrate (as I think we should) stories of people who go back to school decades later. However, there’s some goldilocks age from your mid to late twenties where if you were gonna go or go back you should’ve already done it. Or face the music of “why are you not finished yet?” I could write an entire post on Higher Education and our attitudes about it as a society but… as I was.
No one thinks the kid who was born in October is “behind” the kid who was born in June when they graduate together. But somewhere after that we go back to measuring things in age. With the completion of our education it seems the countdown to accomplish by a certain age begins all over again. What are your next goals professionally and personally? Is there a magic number they need to be attained by? 25, 30, 40? Once again it feels like three, six, or twelve months DOES make all the difference in the world. At least to me it does.
On January 20, 2024 I will have sixty six months until I turn thirty. I’ve yet to find myself the correct balance of you “should be executing a plan” or ” things will work out as they should”. A constant feeling of I should’ve done better or did I waste x amount of time. And then of course, there’s plenty of people saying “You’re just 24…when I was your age…it all works out.” Call me a pessimist but I don’t think it just all works out. I think you can learn to be grateful and content and choose to accept any situation you’re in. That is always a better choice than to live in bitterness and resentment. But that’s not the same as “it all works out”. As Billy Joel said in Vienna, “But when the truth is told, you can get what you want or you can just get old.”
I’ve tried to think of it in this sense lately. It’ll be two years since I graduated in May. I was in a relationship for two years that ended. If I live until I’m, let’s say, 85 fingers crossed, two years is only about ~2.3% of my life. Although I would assume two years right now is more impactful than the two years when I had infantile amnesia (though Sigmund Freud would argue differently). Time is an objective; 365 days is 365 days whether you’re 2 or 24. It only seems subjective as our perception changes.
Banksy, a street artist and activist whose real identity remains unknown, wrote “ I mean they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing, and a second time, a bit later on, when someone says your name for the last time.” (Hot take from someone who has chosen to remain anonymous). There’s plenty of historical figures that by that standard will be immortal, forever written in textbooks and talked about in classrooms.
At Christmas, my family and I spent much time reminiscing on those who have passed. I think of my Uncle Steve and by the principle of this quote, has “lived” eleven years longer than he did on Earth. Five years more for my mom’s parents and almost two decades for my Dad’s mom. I begin to think about my great grandparents who my parents still share stories of several decades later.
We all will eventually reach the point of this “second death”. I mean, as highly as I think of myself, I would never profess myself as some second coming of Plato, inevitably meant to be studied for centuries. The internet is forever though, so hypothetically future generations could read this blog and find my instagram. So where does that leave the rest of us? Not destined to be immortalized in philosophy, politics, or science?
How should we measure our lives? Should we even be measuring? It’s quite perplexing. I think those measurements continue to evolve as we do as people. They become less concrete. Milestones are no longer a poster in a pediatrician’s office. There’s no GPA for how good of a daughter or girlfriend you are. I guess these measurements are more likely to be identified as “goals” the older we get; some with more easily sought paths than others. My own, “a work in progress” as I have decided to think of it. Let’s see how this New Year measures up…lol.
Deborah
Yes, my least favorite holiday has just passed and as always was oh so “anticlimactic”. I have always hated New Years Eve. BAH HUMBUG I am! I’m not quite sure why…sometimes I think it has to do with a traumatic New Years I had when I was in college. I was out with my high school boyfriend and it just was a horrific night.. We got into a massive fight, cops at the car, a violent ride home, ultimately resulting in a break up. Young and stupid, thinking it was the end of my world.. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed New Years Eve since but I hate giving that memory so much power so maybe I’m just being dramatic.
As those memories faded I just could not really seem to enjoy the holiday. I admit I try to make the most of it but deep down I just feel like it’s just the beginning of another year… What are we celebrating for? Was the previous year oh so great? And is the next one going to be so much better? Out with the old in with the new…. New what?
Oh yeah…. New resolutions… For some reason we chose this time to say I’m going to do things differently this year. Why? Was this past year really that bad? And we all have really good intentions. But do we end up successful? Read on!
Hate to disappoint BUT the stats I pulled up state that 38.5 % of adults set a New Years Resolution. 23% quit within the first week, 36% make it to the end of the month and only 9% are successful. “That can’t be?” you are saying to yourself… which is why I am leaving you the link to know I am giving you the full story https://insideoutmastery.com/new-years-resolution-statistics/. The age group that makes up the most of the “ resolutionists” (made up that word) is between 18 and 34. The older you are the less likely you are to make a New Years Resolution. With such a low success rate I would once again say New Years is a failure right out of the gate!
One could think the older group (55+) that chose not to embark on making New Years’ resolutions are simply apathetic but the reality of the situation is, speaking for that age group, we have been there and done that! Numerous times, more than we care to admit to. And guess what? We just confirm the statistics of FAILURE!! The other side of this argument is that at a certain age… you just don’t give a damn.. I so wish I felt that way when I was younger… so much of my anxiety would have been eliminated… Wisdom does seem to come much too late….lol
So without continuing to be a “Debbie Downer” I would like to say that what IS good about the New Year is that it provides a timeline for us as humans to make new memories. It’s a way of looking back to assess what we accomplished over the past year. As Natalie speaks about… kind of measuring our accomplishments or lack there of. The year in retrospect is filled with life events, some good, some bad and some just so so. The years as they go by are our dreams, hopes, and realities.
I can honestly say at my age the years seem to be going by faster. I feel like we all go through this feeling as we age. When I was younger I felt like I had so much time to get the things I wanted to achieve in life accomplished. Now, after all my achieving I feel like the weeks are like months and months are like years. I feel like I have nothing left to achieve and that is a very dismal feeling. (Oops back on the Debbie Downer path) I guess I just have to reinvent myself. I’ve recently came across an instagram ad for this exact phenomenon.
As we get older and live life we will inevitably accomplish things. Some more than others. Many of us have a litany of things we want to achieve. But then many of us are just content to let life happen to them. If I happen to get it done great, and if not that’s great too. Just see where the path leads me. Most of us need to make things happen for us. Everyone’s bar is different. So to measure a life is a personal and individual abstract.
My words of wisdom in this arena are: be true to your inner self, listen and learn from others, be grateful for where you are at the present and most important – just be your best self every day. As Natalie questions and not to be cliche- it does work out the way it is supposed to in the end. Thank you New Years Eve of ’81.
Outro
Happy New Year! We couldn’t be more thankful to begin another year with you. Feminine Findings has given us a unique way to measure our 2023. Beginning with the website’s official relaunch in February to moving towards our work as coauthors, we have been able to reflect and document love, milestones, birthdays, travel, and much more with this blog. It is our estimate that 2023 was a “work in progress”. In retrospect, we feel our year was a great beginning. Hopefully 2024 will bring us new followers which is a quantitative measurement of our success! If you like our content please share with friends and family.
