40 hits different. I thought it was just a momentary restlessness, but it's been two years and the upheaval keeps getting more intense. I asked a couple of other 40-year-olds, and they all said the same thing.
I am desperately trying to navigate my 40's. I feel like a fish out of water. I worked all my adult life building the life I have today, achieving the goals I set out to achieve by the time I turned 40, and now I can't shake the feeling that I don't belong here. I don't want this. If I don't want this, what do I want?
It is a feeling of metamorphosis than of regret. I don't regret the way I have lived my life. In fact, I am proud of it. However, it seems it's time to move on from this life. I am sure I felt the same way while coming out of my mother's womb. Even though my mother's womb was safe and warm, I was ready to be born and embrace the outside world that was unknown and scary. That's how I am feeling right now.
The greatest worldly achievement of my life is that I have become a pro at navigating this cutthroat world and get my way. However, in the process of becoming a pro, I became too pragmatic for my taste. I don't want to be this person who is always trying to keep up with the insane race of the world. I have lost almost everything that is valuable to me in this race.
The first collateral damage of this race is that I have lost one of the greatest blessings of my life - music. Not only have I stopped singing but also stopped listening to music. Music used to flow through my veins like blood. When did I become this person who doesn't listen to music? I will make conscious efforts to make music an active character in my life again.
The greatest regret I have is that I have lost my optimism and faith in humanity. I am the most self-sufficient person I know. I am saying that with a regret. I don't ask for help, and I don't like it when someone asks me for help. I feel like telling them - "when I was dealing with a similar problem, I didn't come to you for help, neither did you ever offer me any help so don't ask me for help now. If I can deal with it on my own, so can you." - I don't want to be this person who doesn't ask for help or offer help. I love solitude way too much. I will continue to make efforts to connect with fellow humans as much as possible.
I strongly believe the reason I feel less human is because I have lost touch with nature. I want to connect with nature more deeply. Living in a concrete jungle with a plastic ground surrounded by screens, I have positively lost a great deal of humanity in me. Regulating and suppressing humanness in me and becoming more and more like a robot every day. I want to feel like a human being again. When I am around nature, lakes, rain, rivers, waterfalls, woods, mountains, flowers, I feel alive again. I feel my heart beating again. I realize that I am also made of the same organic components as them.
When I was going through the darkest phase of my life, I threw away the holy book and renounced God. I thought that once I was out of that phase, I'd find my way back to spirituality and God. It's been a decade; I am still an atheist. I want to believe in God again without going in the logical debate of whether God exists. I want to believe in God because I was not bitter and cynical about the world when I believed in God. I believed that God resided in everyone's heart, so I developed a great deal of love, respect and trust in fellow human beings. I want to be that person again.
Life seemed like a poem to me in my early 20's. I had a great deal of empathy and sensitivity to understand and feel the emotions expressed through different forms of art like poetry, literature, music and movies. I believe that was the time I was at the peak of being me. That was the real and raw Ashwini who could feel the vast ocean of emotions and enriched her heart and soul with them. I want to bring back poetry in my life.
I don't like this Ashwini. As the world knocked me down repeatedly, I learned to harden myself. I have been shattered too many times, and I have put myself back together too many times to go back to being that unbroken version of myself. I am not broken today but there are too many cracks. I want to be like a cracked bowl that has been repaired with that Japanese art of Kintsugi.
At 21, I set out to find my place in the world. At 42, I have made a definitive and secure place in this world but paid a big price for it. Now I want to go back to being the 21-year-old who had a heart full of love, faith, optimism, dreams and courage.
Reading this felt so personal to me because I relate to so much of it. I also became someone who stopped asking for help, and over time I even started disliking when others asked me for help too. Maybe life made me emotionally tired in that way. Responsibilities slowly changed me as well.
ReplyDeleteMusic once meant everything to me, but somewhere between duties, expectations, and survival, I forgot that part of myself too.
I went through a very difficult phase in my life, especially with my in-laws, and that pain changed me deeply. But unlike you, during my darkest time I actually became closer to God. Faith became my strength when nothing else made sense.
Now in my 40s, I also feel like I’m trying to reconnect with the softer, happier, more alive version of myself again. Thank you for writing this so honestly. It made me feel less alone.
Lots of love to you. ❤️
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