On Turning 30 During a Global Pandemic

Birthdays, especially nice round years like the turning of a decade, are often times for reflecting and goal setting. Imagining where you’ll be at the end of the next decade, what great grand adventures you’ll have, ideas you’ll execute. 

This year is different. Having been almost exclusively in my home for the last nine weeks, with the world spinning out of control around us, rather than assessing all of thing things I want to have and do, goals I want to accomplish, I find myself searching for meaning. Turning inward more than ever.

After all, what does it mean to embark on the next phase of your life when the prospects of tomorrow are so uncertain? When the world has turned upside down? When life, as we knew it, will never exist again?

By this point, some of you may already be accusing me of exaggeration or hyperbole. But I assure you I state these things without the slightest hint of antagonism or jest. 

So, after nine weeks of careful, sometimes maddening, contemplation, here's what I've learned about myself while turning 30 in the midst of a global pandemic: 

I am a person who values equality over liberty. Who is content to stay home but craves emotional companionship. Who will take away from this experience the precious value of slowing down.

I'm understanding in a new way that it is the people and relationships we cultivate which matter so much more than our collections.

I will cherish the collective vulnerability of this time, the open and undiluted permission to feel each and every feeling. Being forced into presence, to feel the full release of its freedom. 

In the end, turning 30 doesn’t feel so much big and momentous as it does like any other in a string of monotonous days. Even if it is in the middle of a global health crisis. And that’s ok. The best is yet to come. Onward. - xo Sydney