“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. When you are born a lotus flower, be a beautiful lotus flower, don’t try to be a magnolia flower. If you crave acceptance and recognition and try to change yourself to fit what other people want you to be, you will suffer all your life. True happiness and true power lie in understanding yourself, accepting yourself, having confidence in yourself.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Fifty years ago today I came out of my mother and into this world. It’s been a bit of a calamity ever since. I’ve left some marks, made a ruckus – made you remember some things and forget some others. Perhaps I made you feel something; perhaps I made you feel nothing. In the end, it was usually the ones I wanted most to reach who wanted nothing to do with me, and maybe that will be the greatest lesson of this half-century of living.
Fifty finally feels like the perfect moment for definitively not giving a fuck. Some might say I’ve been here for a while, and that’s fine for them to think, but the truth is I was hanging onto a fuck or two with the foolish hope of… something. That hope has happily flown out the window with the arrival of fifty. There are, at long last, no more fucks to give – and that feels like freedom. That feels like fifty. And that feels just fine.
“To dwell in the here and now does not mean you never think about the past or responsibly plan for the future. The idea is simply not to allow yourself to get lost in regrets about the past or worries about the future. If you are firmly grounded in the present moment, the past can be an object of inquiry, the object of your mindfulness and concentration. You can attain many insights by looking into the past. But you are still grounded in the present moment.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
