Wednesday, September 25, 2013

39

Yesterday I turned 39.  I've rarely had an issue with age or growing older.  Most years, I truly feel like it was better and more fulfilling than the last.  24 was a little rough.  I was out of college but still didn't know what direction I was going.  I had youthful dreams that needed to die but they didn't go down without one heck of a fight.  The first couple of times one truly faces reality is rough (and often heartbreaking). I'm not melancholy about 39, but the closing of a decade is certainly a time to re-prioritize.  I've never been the kind of person who is okay with just surviving.  If I find myself in that situation, were I am merely treading water and not actively becoming a better person, a more loving wife, a stronger parent, a greater influence for good, I start to feel trapped and caged and impotent.  

Over these past couple of years, what it means to have a fulfilling life has changed and grown and developed.  For so long, it was just generically "happiness" but I'm realizing that happiness is really just the bi-product of a truly fulfilling life.  Happiness isn't about circumstances, it is a constant choice, a lovely result, but not the core.  I've come to realize that a clean house makes me happy.  That said, it is the hard work and the diligence to become master over consumerism that really makes me happy; the external ramification being a clean house.