I had "just" been thinking about my lack of angst in December actually. Last summer, I realized that angst seems like something you grow out of - if you're lucky by the time you graduate high school, more commonly probably by the time you're out of college, and often enough over the course of your twenties.... so when on a fourth or fifth date (save your applause, okay, no fine, go ahead, give me props for getting that far into a courtship - afterall, it'd been a while), anyway, so when on a fourth or fifth date I found myself on around Christmas, the gentleman I was out with referenced his own current angst, I filed the reference under a tab in my mind labeled red flag.
He was almost 40, that fellow. And he has so much going for him, he's quite a catch. But yikes, angst that's lingering 10+ years after your quarter-life-crisis must be agonizing and/or at the very least a mindfuck.*
*eloquent.
I told my bud last night that I'd left my angst behind with my mid-twenties. Because I really think I did. When I was 27 going on 28.
In hindsight I wish I'd thought to put it on my old taking/leaving list, then maybe I'd have spared the world some final flairs of my dramatics at 28, but I'm not gonna beat myself up about those. Because the point is, by last summer, when I was pushing 30, I knew my angst was gone for good.
I'm reading "The Happiness Project" and will smugly admit that much of what Gretchen Rubin discovers month to month I already knew or have come to know on my own in the past 9 or 10 years, but tonight I read her June chapter (I'm reading each chapter prior to the calendar year which feels like both a cute and intentional way to approach it), and something she notes stuck with me:
"In a letter to a friend, Flannery O'Connor put this precept another way: 'from 15 - 18 is an age at which one is very sensitive to the sins of others, as I know from recollections of myself. At that age you don't look for what is hidden. It is a sign of maturity not to be scandalized and to try to find explanations in charity.'"
No wonder this wise lady's getting a stamp. She gets it. And what's there to get is this: get over it. Hang ups, jealousy, suspicion, insecurity, competitiveness, feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, regret... angst. These things weigh you down, dampen your spirit and darken your days. Ain't nobody got time for that.
There's something I heard at the funeral of a dear friend’s
grandmother a while back … “Golden hours are one of the few things in this
world you get free of charge. If
you had all the money in the world, you couldn’t buy an extra hour. What will you do with this priceless
treasure? Remember, you must use
it as it is given only once. Once
wasted you cannot get it back.”
I've moved now, ohhhhh let's see, 11 times in the last 9 years (having previously lived in one of two homes in Newton, MA for 23 years). The nomadic lifestyle lends itself to making cuts and learning how to live a minimalistic existence. Somewhere along the way to fully valuing time I left my bag of angst behind. And man oh man, do I recommend others do the same.
