“These are the best years of your life.”
People looooove to tell you that when you’ve just had a baby.
They also tell you that it “goes by so fast, cherish every moment,” and yada yada insert well-meaning advice and nostalgia that basically makes me start to panic here.
These constant conversations make me want to stare at my baby like a watched pot, lest I look away and she’s already boiling off to college, leaving me a wrinkled wreck alone on the floor.
Alone! Her babyhood gone, wasted!
My mother would say this future me will be eating dog food on the side of the road, reminiscing on those “best” years and full of longing and regret. (LOL.)
BUT THIS IS WHAT IT DOES TO ME! The drama, right?
I KNOW people mean well, and I truly appreciate the reminder that life races by if you’re not paying attention.
Really.
I actually try to remind myself of life’s fleetingness at every corner because I really WANT to be present for it.
But I’ve been hearing “these are the best years of your life” forever, and you probably have too.
ENOUGH.
I remember being a whiny kid and the adults laughing to each other saying “just wait ‘till these kiddos are the ones paying the bills! Then they’ll know what struggle really is!”
(I can’t remember if this actual sentence was uttered, but the gist was definitely there: basically, you should appreciate being a kid because being an adult suuuucks. Also known as, if you think life’s hard now, just you wait KID!)
And I wasn’t some carefree and constantly happy kid either—I don’t remember ever being unencumbered by life’s woes or worries. So this whole idea that life was already peaking was hard to swallow even then.
Then there was high school and all of the hormones and awkwardness that came with it. No matter how many pimples I had on my forehead or aches in my HIGHLY emotional heart, inevitably I’d hear from teachers/parents/adults that “these are the best years of your life, you better enjoy them!”
And yeah, I tried to, as best I could while worrying if my pager matched my t-shirt and how to appear popular when I was actually a nervous wreck most of the time.
Sure, I didn’t yet have bills to pay, but I DID have a constant existential crisis and enough insecurity for a whole bachelorette cast. While these weren’t entirely terrible years, I most definitely knew they couldn’t be the best either.
The thing is, I’ve always kind of known that the whole “these are the best years of your life” idea was BS.
The reason it’s BS is because each of us has different “best years” and what one person absolutely loved and misses (like high school parties or being the parent of a baby) others are actually really grateful to be done with.
And on TOP of that idea, more importantly, even if you’re in a FANTASTIC time (like I admittedly am with the sweetest little baby in my arms) it can be ruined by premature nostalgia.
Premature nostalgia-lation - but without any government funded antidote.
For example, sometimes I’ll stare at Matilda longingly and think “Oh no. You’re gonna grow up someday, you’re gonna move away, you might not come to visit, the cat’s in the cradle with the silver spoon, little boy blue and the man on the moon…”
(You see where this is going, right? Dramatic breakdown town.)
But lately I’ve been turned on to the idea that premature nostalgia (or actual nostalgia, like missing a past stage of life) comes from a place of *scarcity.*
Scarcity…AKA fear that there’s not enough…AKA the life ruiner.
If I stare at Matilda and lament that she’s already SO much bigger, that she literally grows overnight, and cry over the newborn clothes that no longer fit, I’m not trusting that there is SO much joy to be found in her next stage…when she’s walking, or talking, or becoming her own personality and person.
Sad nostalgia (as opposed to loving nostalgia) stems from not trusting that there is joy to be found in the future too.
This is joy that I can’t yet imagine, and don’t even need to – but I also don’t have to grasp at the current moment like water running through my hands, constantly escaping me even though all I want is to lap up these “best years.”
Yes, I can be grateful and present that right now I get to have her sweet little cheek pressed against my heart all day, but it doesn’t have to be tinged with sadness that it will all change soon –which it will— that someday her cheeks might be talking back to me.
Ultimately, all ANY of us has is the present moment in time. We can also have faith that there’s lots of joy still left to be had.
But THIS is the time that we’re in, THIS is the best year – this one that is right here, right now.
(A quick note that I know some years are REALLY f***ing hard too. In the midst of trauma or sickness or grief, it’s pretty hard to imagine there not being better years in the past or longing to just get to the future already. These hard times are valid but also not what I’m talking about, because *most* of us, God willing, aren’t usually in those times.)
Whether this time is fantastic, kinda boring, or a little lonelier than we’ve been in the past— THIS moment right here and now is the only one that can ever be the absolute best, because it’s the only one that we still have control over.
The party’s not over, and it’s important that I don’t assume the clock is running out on my own “best years.”
I don’t want you to assume that either.
And if you want help making THIS moment right here right now better, or making these very years the BEST ones, shoot me a message and let’s do some work together. This is what I do as a coach – help remove any obstacles standing between your life now and the life you WISH you had.
I’m also really good at coordinating a pager with a t-shirt too. 😊
xo
Melissa