Fortune, Fame and Beauty.
If she had known her future when she was a kid, if she saw how her life turned out, would she have continued on her journey or checked out early, returning to the mothership demanding a refund?!
When she was younger she dreamt of fortune, fame and beauty, all things that would successfully fill the deep black hole of low self-esteem. Desperate to be cool and accepted she thought these 3 musketeers would fulfill the demands of the boxes that needed ticking in order to make her happy.
A few decades of living since have taught her how misguided these ideas were, even going so far as to mock those young naive thoughts of her younger self. But as a middle-aged woman with large numbers and milestones looming just over the horizon, there were once again multitudes of shoulds, woulds and failures lying in wait on the crest of the next big hill.
Recently she had been chatting with friends about life and how they feel about their place in it. Some are further along the minefield of growing older, while others are trailing, still sitting pretty on the “right side” of 45. What was clear though was that no matter where they were, society had given them a cookie jar of shitty choices about how they should be feeling about it. If you don’t get married, don’t buy a house, don’t have kids, or don’t make a certain amount of money you are a failure. But what happens if you did all those things, ticked most of those must-have boxes, the house, the job, the partner and kids, and still feel like something is missing? You‘re not sure how but you know you have failed somewhere.
Whether it was all the boxes getting ticked or missing them entirely, none of her friends were left unaffected by some sense of not quite getting it right, the rigid boundaries of shoulds setting everyone up for some kind of failure, leaving them at times on a gritty plain of isolation, depression and lack.
In the past few years, through doing a lot of work on this, she was getting a handle on the shoulds and, for the most part, was warmly content with the life she had built. As an adult she had been (lucky) and brave, following the whisper, choices made with desire rather than the stagnant weight of fear. This came with its own price tag of course – many boxes had been left unchecked, which in moments of humanness left room for comparison to sneak in, bulldozing her pretty little house of cards in seconds.
Through all of it though, what she was learning was that the path of what was right or wrong for her was not static. It changed, often by the minute, depending on the lens through which she viewed her life. Yesterday she wept with the self-loathing of not being good enough, today the sun breaking through the new spring trees, onto the lawn where her family was playing had her knowing she was where she was meant to be. The cliche is true: what she focused on, what she was grateful for, usually dictated how she felt. Her success and failure didn’t need to be measured in dollar signs, rather she found it in the small day-to-day moments that brought her joy, the only necessary tool needed was the awareness of being able to see it.
This was a far-flung move away from those young dreams of fortune, fame and beauty. Sure, fortune would be really awesome, to not have to worry about money would be a liberation, but one that would come with its own consequences. Creativity often grows out of need. She had seen firsthand how it can fizzle up and die under the privilege of not needing to do it. Secretly she had always whispered let it come later, somehow sensing a loneliness within its great green blanket. Until then she must struggle to find peace in the feast or famine of her chosen artistic life.
In regards to middle child, Fame. It is something she no longer courts; it is not the hand that guides her. If it comes it is a (welcome) bi-product, an acknowledgment of her creative day-to-day. Skipping hand in hand down the road with Fortune, it will greet her with a set of keys to the castle.
As for Beauty, well, as a middle-aged woman, that is a ship that has probably sailed into the Western youth-obsessed horizon. As a young woman much of her self-worth had been caught up in how attractive people thought she was. One female photographer went so far as to suggest that the only reason she got hired was because she was pretty. This new cloak of invisibility allowed her to embark on a fascinating journey in learning how to navigate through the world differently. Some days were easier than others, the lines and bumpy jaw being less or more depending on her mood and the light! Justine Bateman said in her book Face that it is a woman’s essence, her confidence in herself and her ever-evolving style, that makes her beautiful, rather than the line free faces so many crave. It is this ideal she has chosen to get behind, for now, as she heads into the deep uncharted waters of middle age.
She is not sure if any of this would have satisfied her teenage self. Perhaps the knowledge of dreams being followed would be enough or maybe the relief of an emptiness now filled with contentment might shake her free of those future desires. Maybe though her youth just needed a hug, a whisper in her ear that many of the answers were found in the quiet joys, not in the glitz or the shoulds. But then where are the lessons, adventures and fun in growing old if you figure that all out when you’re 15 years old!?