4 Lessons from the Summer
I don’t know about everyone else, but this summer was not the Hot Girl Summer I dreamt of. Every week a new place was on fire in the west. Or there was a flood in the east. Politicians were public idiots when dealing with the livelihood of its constituents. COVID evolved once more, right when we thought we were out of the worst of it. On a personal note, I cried so much I now take electrolyte tablets some mornings to stay hydrated. My anxiety skyrocketed to a place I hadn’t been in a long time. And there just did not feel like there was much forward movement in my life.
All in all though, it was a pretty unforgettable summer. Not just because it’s the last summer we will have where the “highs” will be a bearable 106 degrees fahrenheit, but because it was The Summer of Growing Pains.
Picture that on a theater marquee in lights!
Although I speak for myself only, I do feel as if Growing Pains was the general theme for most of the people around me. The world appeared to be opening up and with that we collectively had to ask ourselves, “Ok… what now? Can I move forward with my life? HOW do I move forward?” And that’s where I found myself at the beginning of the summer, bright eyed, bushy tailed, and fully vaxxed.
The cutest fool, sometime in April.
Now, how do I possibly explain everything I felt this summer. There was so much joy and wonder and love. But I was growing so fast in the process. It fucking scared me so much, I started denying the voice in my head telling me that change was imminent. I need not fight it. But I kept fighting, dodging, and running away. I wanted change but I did not want to face what the truth of that change meant: discomfort.
Now here I am, in the midst of all the change that I both chose and was forced into, writing this blog post about the lessons I learned this summer. If it helps you, I’m glad. I wish I had heard this back in May… maybe it would have made the coming months easier. Probably not. But it’s human to hope otherwise.
1. Create your own beliefs
Seems straightforward… maybe even obvious, right? But when it comes down to it, you grow up inheriting most of the beliefs of the people who raised you. As you forge your own path in the world, you’ll start creating your own beliefs about what you think of big things like love and discrimination or small things like the right way to do laundry. These beliefs tend to be more visible in your everyday life and you can shed the inherited beliefs that don’t work for you with almost zero thought.
However, not all of what you believe is so above the surface. Some things lie deep, more than likely because it’s a generational belief. This summer I realized I still held my parents’ beliefs on money and what success means. These beliefs were very subtle and I didn’t realize how miserable they were making me. I was trying to fit my journey into a specific image of success and money that I didn’t even realize I had adopted as my own.
By unknowingly living with this adopted belief, I found myself caught in this vicious cycle. It begins with me working all the hours I can at whatever day job I have at the moment in order to seem productive and make money; then I will feel guilty because I am not fulfilling my own desires of creating and writing, this is followed by me diving into my personal work - my day job be damned(!) - until I inevitably feel guilty that I am not making a lot of money. This leads to me returning to work, meanwhile, not making good progress on my creative efforts, therefore those efforts will die off until the next time I come back around. This negative cycle would loop and loop and loop until I felt burnt out and would result in zero progress on saving money or projects done. And who suffers? Only little ol’ me.
One day I finally realized, “Oh, this isn’t me.”
I was flung out of that loop, face first.
I’ve been at a loving and respectable distance from my parents for the past two years and it’s gotten me to learn how to listen to myself. What do I believe? What is mine? What is theirs?
I sat at a job interview the other day with a tightness in my stomach that I assumed to be your average job interview nerves. It wasn’t until after the interview that I realized that it was actually my gut telling me that I didn't want that job. I just thought I did because the money and success it would lead to sounded nice. Once I put that thought together the tightness disappeared and I went about my day, unbothered. Okay, maybe a little guilty because I am still shedding some of those inherited beliefs, but I’m learning each day what success will mean for me. It’s all a process.
Which brings me to lesson number --
2. There is plenty of time
That time pressure you might feel to get something done by the time you’re [insert ridiculously young age here] is because the world around you has dictated your timeline. That timeline was created to measure success in a very narrow, Westernized, capitalistic, state of mind. It shouldn’t work for everyone because again, success means different things to different people. You are your own unique individual, with a unique life, and unique experiences… So why would you live your life at anyone else’s pace other than your own?
Time has always been something very precious to me. In fact I think time is our most valued asset. Earlier in life I assumed I could add value to my time by filling my hours with “productive tasks” and if I wasn’t doing that then I was totally wasting it. I would always think months into the future, thus living my present with so much impatience for what I assumed to be a more promising future, that I would forget that the present already has value.
This summer I was pretty frustrated with the stagnancy I judged my life to be in. And yes, it was no one’s judgement except my own. Despite my frustration, I decided to see it as a calm before the storm. I was doing everything I could already: writing, applying to jobs, learning, and saving money. So I decided to be mindful with my time rather than be productive. I would make sure I did at least two things that brought me joy each day, sometimes those things would interlap with productivity, sometimes they wouldn’t.
Either way, I found myself really enjoying the smaller moments. I would go for walks around my neighborhood, spotting the rabbits amongst the bushes, and getting ideas for witty dialogue for my scripts. I would read at my local park on top of my old picnic blanket, getting nods of approval by older couples walking their spunky dogs. I would drink tea while watching an old black and white Mexican film with my aunt and uncle; my uncle would talk the entire time, and my aunt would do her French Duolingo lesson. There was no way I could live this way and be ungrateful.
As long as you’re moving each day towards your goals, whether by leaps, bounds, or millimeters, you are moving. Don’t settle for instant gratification because it might match other people’s timelines of success. Be patient with yourself to figure out what you want and align your actions with that vision. If you aren’t patient with yourself, how do you expect others to be? There is plenty of time to do what you need to do. There really is! Don’t forget to enjoy it though.
3.Life is made of cycles
Yes, there is plenty of time, but it’s worth noting that things are always ending. The good, the bad, and the ugly. It all ends. And I don’t mean this in a bleak existential way (though there’s plenty of that between the lines), but rather in an optimistic way that makes you want to relish every moment while it lasts.
Life goes in cycles. You are guaranteed that with every low moment in your life, a high moment will follow. Though you might be at a job that drains you, a living situation that stresses you, or a college class that knocks all motivation out of you… it’s all happening only for the moment. It will end. What you can do - what you MUST do - is find the joy of learning within the experience as it happens. How can this be an opportunity to grow? What skills are you gaining or strengthening? How do you make this bearable for yourself?
Even if you can’t see it as you’re going through it, in hindsight, you will see that the moment has made you better. Every experience stacks on top of your last experiences and makes you who you are. It helps you grow (thus the stacking metaphor). Years down the road, you might find yourself in a similar experience and know how to deal with it better this time around or you just might need one of the skills you gained to apply it to something more worthwhile.
For example, I’ve been working a retail job for the last year now. And though it hasn’t been the most artistically enriching job for me, it has taught me a lot about people - one of my favorite topics! The job has helped give me the confidence to be completely myself around total strangers while also learning how to really listen to what people have to say - even if it’s batshit crazy. It has also pushed me to be kind and helpful even at my most tired and wretched, a resilience I definitely needed.
Of course, the high points in life must end too. But once you live your life with the awareness that moments come in cycles, you learn how to live the best parts to the max. And those memories might just carry you more easily through the lows.
4. Love means moving past fear
Speaking of lows, the summer ended for me in heartbreak.
It hasn’t been the first and it won’t be the last… though, god, how I wish it were. However, if I think about it... it is so beautiful to try again at love even after going through pain, disrespect, and heavy disappointment. It takes a lot to keep from becoming jaded. And I admit to you all that I was jaded at one point earlier in my attempts, if you can call them that.
Maybe that’s why this particular heartbreak hurt so much, because I tried not to be jaded, in a world where it’s so much easier to be just that.
I was not the same when I started dating this most recent person over the last six months give or take. I was broken from a previous person, and I had a wall up that I was very aware of. I think when I first met my ex, I was mean and avoidant. I knew that I would begin to fall for them and I knew it would be hard for me to accept. But for some reason… I decided to let go of fear. And it was a continuous practice, being fearless, I didn’t just lose all fear by deciding to not have it. There were many elements I had to practice. I practiced remaining open. I practiced trusting. I practiced patience. I practiced giving. I practiced receiving. I practiced letting go of my ego and of the past. I practiced, I practiced, I practiced, when all I wanted to do was run, run, run.
And eventually despite my practicing, despite my efforts, despite my good intentions… it didn’t pan out.
Whether it was that they weren’t practicing in return or we weren’t in sync, it doesn’t matter. The truth became that being with them was draining my energy… the very substance that makes me who I am. I admit I tried to deny it. By the time I realized we weren’t going to work out long term, they meant so much to me, the thought of not having them in my life terrified me. I couldn’t pull the trigger on breaking up. So, my heart started breaking with every disappointment. I thought that if I could voice the problems then maybe we could mend the entire relationship. Maybe one day we could get it right. Maybe they would see what I see. Maybe--
But you can’t mend what isn’t meant to be. Voicing the problems only made that more apparent. We were hurting each other more than helping each other. The real solution was clear.
In the end, it took a lot of courage from both sides to say goodbye to each other...
But isn’t that love too?
