The 10 Year Challenge

I swear, the 10 year challenge is some sort of corporate mindfuck, like Sweetest Day or Mother’s Day, meant to make us feel inadequate and drive us to spend money on things we don’t need to fill our self-esteem void. No one—I repeat—NO ONE looks and feels better after 10 years of a well-lived life. We may tell ourselves that we look wiser, more zen, more in control—but we are also older, greyer, lumpier, wrinklier, closer to death. Every 10-year challenge photo collage on my feed is conveniently followed by ads for fixes for menopausal symptoms, work-out programs, intermittent fasting plans, and comfortable bras. 

We are being played.

It’s impossible to avoid feeling inadequate, if we compare ourselves to someone 10 years younger. That’s 10 years of living, 10 years of hopes and dreams and struggles and frustrations and anxieties and illnesses and disasters and joys. Just look at the dust on the top of the ceiling fan blades. Multiply that by 10 years. That’s a lot of dust. That’s a lot of life lived.

I look back at 39-year-old me, and I was a hot mess. Single, trying to keep 2 kids alive, trying to pay the bills on a single salary, trying to keep up with an impossible workload, trying to be “fun enough” for a leadership team of childless men—that woman was thin and gorgeous, sharp angles and intense eyes. I see those pictures and I can’t believe how beautiful she was, a red-headed powerhouse who wore heels on purpose. 

But I’m not sure that person is someone I want to compare myself to. She was stunning. But she was also hanging on by a thread. Her best friend rescued her on the regular, as she locked herself and her kids out of the car, out of the house, lost her keys again and again in the snow. Her patience was as taut as her calves; she punched walls late at night out of frustration, trying to get her kids to just go to bed; her students thought she hated them, because she couldn’t keep the exhaustion and frustration out of her voice and off her face, as they asked a question she’d already answered 6 times, and then complained about having to read a book in English class.

I’m not that woman anymore. My students still complain; I still get frustrated. That frustration still shows in my voice and on my face. And yet, they tell me regularly that I approach them with honesty and compassion, and they thank me on the regular for my understanding and grace. I’m not the teacher I was, thank god. My own kids no longer scream at bedtime; I don’t punch walls anymore. I don’t take long walks outside in the dark after they are in bed, just trying to remember to breathe, while desperately hoping the house doesn’t burn down while I’m gone. I’m not the mom I was.

I know that, ten years from now, my kids will be out of the house and my workload will lighten substantially. I won’t be kicking out 100s of dollars a month to pay for clothes for kids who won’t stop growing, and to cover sports fees and school fees and music lessons and batting lessons and McDonalds. In just a few more years, I won’t have to get up at 5:30 in the morning if I actually want a warm shower; I won’t have to fold 8 loads of laundry every weekend; I won’t have to try to put food on the table that will appease all of the likes and dislikes and allergies and abhorrences in the house. In 10 years, my house will be paid off and I won’t have to work 3 jobs to pay the bills. 10 years from now, I will be 59. Maybe, when all of this current responsibility is gone, maybe I can get back to the size 12 that I was 10 years ago. Maybe that’s when the comparison picture will make me feel like I’ve come into my own, that I’ve finally aged gracefully. And yet, 10 years from now, the chin(s) will be lower, the wrinkles deeper, the skin more transparent, the hair greyer, the ads for bladder slings ever more prevalent. 10 years from now, will I be good enough?

David Foster Wallace, love him or hate him, mused about “making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head.” (Spoiler alert—he didn’t make it.) but he did tell the story about the two young fish that now lives as a tattoo on my forearm.

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"

If we are so busy comparing ourselves to who we were—or to who we think we should be—we are never allowed to appreciate who we are today. There are so many things I want to do this year, the year I turn 50, and so far I haven’t managed any of them very successfully. Life got in the way.

But life is the water we are in.

I don’t want to waste this year of my life, comparing myself to who I was, or who I think I should be. I want to live this year of my life—right here, right now—and appreciate this water for what it is. I want to learn to extend the grace to myself that I try so hard to extend to my kids and my students and my partner. 

Photo by Steven Lasry on Unsplash

I want to look in the mirror and appreciate the beauty that is looking back at me, not because of who she was or who she might someday be, but because of who she is today.

Maybe that’s my 10 year challenge.