let's get old

i was just forwarded a speech that steve jobs made at a college graduation, and as i was reading it, reading about his theories regarding how life is, i began to think about something that i have considered many times before.

i know that society is obsessed with youth, and that nobody wants to get old, per se, but i'm sure they're right when they say youth is wasted on the young. of course i won't appreciate this for at least another 20 years, but i am definitely beginning to understand that there is something i will have when i am 40 that i cannot hope to have now.

and i don't mean wrinkles.

i have heard so many women in their 40's say that in their 20's, they were beautiful and young with shiny hair and fresh faces, but they were utterly, utterly stupid. naive. they tried too hard. as in, they just didn't know who they were. they thought they did, but they didn't have the sense of self, the sense of niche, of belonging, of settled contentment that they did two decades later. i wonder if this is true of all us 20-something women.

not that i want a sense of settled contentment now. at 26, i'm not really looking for settled anything. but i do think that i have life experiences ahead of me that will constitute a coming of age. or many of them.

i am learning, recently, that i have a lot of choices when it comes to whose voices and whose influences i let into my being- and i am also learning that making the right choices, or the sane or wise choices, is something that in some ways, i am not yet equipped for. i thought the transformation from pre-college to college to post-college zahra was dramatic and significant- and it was. and i think now that it was only the first of many such transformations.

but as far as life after college, i think those transformations will be much more subtle. and probably much more significant.

i could be wrong- and i could be naive- but i am looking forward to the wrinkly days.