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Things that are on my mind,
besides drafting (and drafting) my novel, of course.
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Unlearning in My 40s
You have to learn before you unlearn. So, in my 20s, I learned. I learned from mentors, bosses, family, classes, my professional life, my personal life, lectures, academia, professional societies and leaders — I absorbed everything. And I came out with a lot of convictions about the world, the way it works, and the way I thought it should improve.
Your 30s, my friend Kate once told me, are your god/goddess years. No longer naive, a bit of the world behind you, but not yet slowed down by age, you are confident, energetic, ready to take on the world. My convictions became even stronger, reinforced (by my biases and echo chamber). They became the mantras by which I lived my life, and other people were just wrong.
But, I was also raising kids in my 30s, which began to cause some cognitive dissonance in my hard-and-fast life rules. Parenthood started unraveling my certainties. I read all the books about parenting, but my first child will never follow the rules (now, I love this about him), and I started to question myself. I started giving leniency to the way other people parented and saw they may get equal or better results than me — my way wasn’t, in fact, always best. I also had two rounds of depression (post-partum and following my dad’s death), something “I didn’t believe in.” “Just fix yourself, be happy,” were thoughts I had about depression, mainly because it hadn’t happened to me. Again, I learned things were more complicated than I knew.
In my 40s, I am expanding that humility beyond parenting and depression to everything. I’ve learned I should unlearn my convictions. I once stubbornly said I would never do yoga or meditate, and, it turns out, those are both very helpful for me. I’ve learned that different styles of relationships, our political or religious beliefs, ways we cope with the death of a loved one, or the way we cope with life in general is up to the individual, and it does me no good to think my way is right and someone else is wrong. Because it’s just not that simple, and it’s not true. There is something to learn from nearly everyone (even if it’s how not to be). But you can’t learn unless you’re willing to unlearn what you thought you knew so well.
We’re all just out there doing our best. We’re all human. I do think we should always be learning and unlearning throughout our life. That’s the one conviction I’ll stand by.