Forty Five
Today is my birthday and I have successfully navigated another trip around the sun, bringing my total to 45. This feels like a significant number, though I suppose no more than any other, except that the trips seem to be happening more and more quickly as of late. I’m told that this only increases with time, so I’d best make good use of each one.
While I want to restrain myself from offering words of wisdom, birthdays do seem designed for reflection; moments to mark how we’ve changed and grown, how life has shifted around us, and how our understanding of the world has evolved. So forgive me a few old-person reflections.
One of my favourite things to observe in the people I love are the traces of personality that remain from their childhoods. With my spouse, this is easy, because we happen to have a carbon copy of him for a son. It’s a magical experience to raise a kid who shares so many of the same traits, quirks, and passions as my partner. I get to see reflections of two people I love deeply mirrored in each other. It gives me a window into who my partner was as a child, and how those characteristics grew and shaped him into the adult he became.
I have other close friends I can do this with too: catching glimpses of the passions, humour, and whimsy that must have defined them as younger versions of themselves. I love it. It reminds me that those traits never really leave us, and that while we grow and mature, we never entirely abandon our younger selves or the flaws that accompany our youth.
Sometimes, when I try to do this for myself, I struggle to see the bits and pieces that made up the younger version of me. Self-reflection is often harder than observing others. I was a pretty quiet kid. Shy. Observant. When I think about moments from my childhood where I felt happiest and most at peace, most of the memories involve being outside, usually alone with my thoughts, toodling around with bits of grass or bark or rocks, looking for crayfish, or climbing and exploring trees.
This morning I was planting pepper seedlings in the garden and caught a glimpse of that younger self again, carefully teasing apart fragile roots that had become entwined and gently laying each plant in rows, ready to be tucked into the soil. I think this version of myself has always been there. I’m most at peace when I can return to them.
Perhaps growing older is really just an opportunity to lean more fully into the parts of ourselves we actually like. So much of our teens and twenties is spent trying to harden into shapes defined by other people’s expectations. While we’re never entirely free from those pressures, I do think age offers a certain loosening. The older we get, the more we can shed what doesn’t fit, especially when it pulls us away from the moments that make us feel most alive, grounded, and whole.
Forever old by some people’s standards and young by others, 45 feels less like a destination and more like a place of imagination – a possible returning to the self that existed before performance, expectation, and all the cultural influence and noise. Maybe the real gift of aging is not perpetual growth in a clear forward direction, but circling back to become a more honest version of who we were all along.
