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Because feeling like a fuck up isn’t about being a failure, it’s about being made to feel like one. It’s the pressure and the panic to tick all the boxes and reach all the goals . . . and what happens when you don’t. When you find yourself on the outside. Because on some level, in some aspect of your life, it’s so easy to feel like you’re failing when everyone around you appears to be succeeding.”
If getting older has taught me one thing, it’s that I feel so many conflicting things about so many different things, and to negate or stifle any of them doesn’t make them go away. Emotions don’t necessarily have a moral compass. Feelings can’t be shamed into disappearing. Suppressing and ignoring them will only make them come back to bite you in the therapist’s chair.
And I understand we all want to be visible in some respects . . . to be seen . . . to be acknowledged. It doesn’t matter what age you are . . .
this: the people who matter will see you, no matter what.”
“I’m eighty-one years old and I’ve learned if there’s one gift you can give yourself in life, it’s the freedom and courage to say ‘I don’t know.’ Because I’ll let you into a secret—you don’t have to know. You don’t have to know how you feel, or what you want, or if you’re happy or if you’re sad. Life is full of choices and decisions, and there is so much pressure on us to make all the right ones. But what if we don’t? What if we have doubts and misgivings? What if we make mistakes and contradict ourselves?”
There is no age limit on adventure. You’re not too old, it’s not too late, and yes you can.
People always talk about happy endings, but I think it should be happy beginnings. Who wants to talk about endings when ahead is a brand-new year, stretching out before you. One filled with infinite possibilities and wonderful new opportunities and decisions to be made and doubts to be had and a whole lot of love to be explored.
This feeling of strength and calm that comes from realizing you’re never really going to know what the hell you’re doing but it’s never too late to start over. Because it’s only when you are ready to surrender the life you thought you were going to live that you finally get the life you were always meant to live.**
