My Lessons at 30.

My Lessons at 30.

I turned 30 on January 27, 2022. Isn’t it incredible how time flies? Just the other day, I was twenty-one and a new, clueless mum. Then I was twenty-four, seated in a dimly-lit, poorly finished office, busy flipping Excelling in English Form Two Learners’ Book. Then I was twenty-seven, reading and obsessing over Chimamanda Adichie’s art and afro-hair. Then I was 28, enervated by anxiety thanks to excessive consumption of Covid-19 news. Then, 29 … And now, 30!

Pragmatically, 30 is just a number. But aren’t we human? Longing? Perpetually seeking meaning? It shouldn’t therefore be terribly surprising how we try to make sense of numbers, and especially whole numbers.

As a delightful student in the school of life, I’ve learnt a number of lessons from personal experiences, literature and through observation. Here are some:

1. No one is coming to save you. Hackneyed an expression as it may be, a banality even, it’s been one of the most recurrent lessons in my life after 25. There isn’t a ship that is about to dock with every of your goal without any effort from your side. You may read all the self-help books to ever have been inked, listen to all motivational talks, but if you don’t push yourself to break your bad habits, to unlearn, to change whatever needs to be changed, then babe, nothing changes. And I think that one of the realities one has to grapple with as they grow old is how alone they are.
2.  It wasn’t true what we thought about adults while we were younger; that they had it all together, that they were freer, that things just happened.
3. No one/nothing prepares you to watch your parents age, their hair grey, wrinkles replace the hitherto glowing, elastic skin of their youth, their agility wane and their vision blur. Understanding the changes as a fact of life while still being affected by it, reveals that we are intellectual and emotional at the same time.
4. There’s nothing you can do to inoculate yourself from life’s misfortunes.
5. Loss is one of the toughest, inexplicable things that we have to deal with as human. No amount of loss prepares us for more loss. No number of heart breaks equips our heart to handle it better.
6.  Goalposts are perpetually shifting. There’s therefore no arrival. (Perhaps this might change with time)
7. Growth isn’t necessarily painless.
8. We outgrow people. People outgrow us. It’s life.
9. Books humanize experiences that seem far off your ideology plane.
10. On motherhood, it is one thing to be (N) and quite another to do (V). And it’s appalling, sometimes, the distance between those two forms. There’s so much glamour around being, whereas doing can be emotionally taxing, messy, tiring, sometimes lonely, guilt –filled, unending.
11. There are people for whom you’ll never run out of fucks to give.
12. Time dulls pain.
13. Every service you offer in your earlier years, paid or unpaid, even if you don’t understand it will eventually make sense. In the end, the dots connect.
14. There’s immense power in prayer.

With the whole if my life before me, I move forward expectant and cautiously optimistic, fully aware that life comes a full package.