I had a happy birthday recently, I am fifty five years old now. Almost retired. I have had a full life with work, marriage, kids, parents, in-laws, house, all the good stuff.
Growing up, the culture was such that one was told to keep on improving. Improve your speaking skills, your dress sense, look better, speak better, cook better, smile better, interact better, feel happier. I believed in the self improvement movement completely.
I read a lot of self help, self improvement books, my library book history is a proof of that. I have explored buddhism and sikhism to improve my mind and attitude. I have read about all the fad diets of the moment and tried a couple-no results unfortunately. I have walked/run a marathon and some half-marathons and 5Ks to improve my endurance. I have watched countless YouTube videos trying to learn the makeup techniques though I don’t apply any makeup. I took some cooking classes to improve my dinner offerings but that is one area where I just can’t drum up even a bit of enthusiasm. I do yoga sometimes, I have attended a few yoga classes too. I have read books on time management and productivity and decluttering and followed their advice to some extent.
Reflecting over my life; birthdays seem to do that to me, I realize I have improved some. The anxiety I had as a young person, the fear of the future, has definitely improved. I feel I am calmer in certain situations which previously would have turned me into a banshee.
I am also not as worried about my impression on others. I don’t go over my conversations, taking them apart to see where I went wrong. I don’t analyze people’s expressions, did that frown mean I said something wrong or did they just remember they had forgotten the passcode of the ever-present phone in their hand?
Is this a result of all my efforts at self-improvement? Or is it just that I am growing older and wiser?
I recently read the book, 4000 weeks: Time management for mortals by Oliver Burkeman. His premise is that we live for approximately 4000 weeks on planet earth, how do we make the most of it? He has some good suggestions: work on the most important project of the day in the first hour, limit to not more than 3 active projects at a time-something which might help me with my propensity to start multiple projects and leave them halfway, be a good procrastinator by focussing on a few important tasks.
There’s one line which I found to be meaningful: Attention is life. Your experience of being alive consists of nothing other than the sum of everything to which you pay attention.
This is the thing, self improvement is hard work. You have to be always obsessing over your actions, analyzing them, trying to see if you took the right step towards the goal. When I look back at my life, I feel that I was always forcing myself to change some habit or the other to improve myself.
There is a fine difference between improving habits to have a smoother daily life and improving yourself to change your personality.
It was helpful to improve my time management skills when the kids were young and I had a full house. And those same time management skills have become second nature, which helps when my elderly father in law needs more care and I can fit all my chores in while also taking care of his needs.
I am glad I got onto the decluttering train so the house looks relatively organized. I did hear recently that after her third child, even Marie Kondo has stopped konmariing her house. Now her children ‘spark joy’
With self improvement, I also feel it involves a lot of introspection, looking inwards, navel gazing? That can get boring after awhile. There is a whole beautiful world out there which I haven’t experienced and time seems to be running out.
So I am getting off the self improvement wagon and moving on to self-maintenance, which is maintaining a status quo. This is who I am. Just Be. It is okay if I still don’t have a great dressing style. Maybe I will get back to decluttering again in a few months, or years: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson is on hold at my library.
But till then, I am going to relish exploring my neighborhood, spend some time with my family, converse long and deep with my long forgotten friends, watch some trashy t.v. and stare into space.
What is this life, if full of care,/We have no time to stand and stare. Leisure by W.H.Davies
As I finish typing this, I see my ninety-four year old father-in-law who watches t.v. all day in between his dozing sessions, and I wonder, am I on the right track? Maybe I should participate in a marathon this year?
