On Turning 30 and Not Giving a Sh*t (in a good way!)

I turn 30 in less than a month.

Here is how I feel I am different from when I was 20:

1) Music: I no longer exert too much time and energy trying to find new music. Don't get me wrong, I still love music, and I do seek it out, but I am quite passive about finding music and Shazam is my friend. What I listen to has stopped being a status symbol for me. I'll listen to Taylor Swift alongside Fleet Foxes or Radiohead or the BeeGees. I like what I like, and I really don't care who it impresses (or doesn't.)

2) Style: Five years ago, if you'd asked me what I thought about tattoos I would have immediately spouted off some self-righteous indictment against tattoos and those who got them--especially about "those who knew better" than to get one. I would get borderline angry about them. I now find that attitude completely ridiculous. I am also never interested in having any conversation about tattoos, piercings, clothing or the like unless it is to talk about how something looks awesome or bad in a strictly artistic sense. I absolutely believe my body is a temple, but I am more interested in purifying my character than making sure I "look right" on the outside. I also find people's attitudes about these outward things to be a good bellwether of how well I will get along with them. For example, if you express disgust for people who make certain aesthetic choices that you or I wouldn't necessarily make, then the chances are good that we won't be friends. Now the $5 million question: do I personally have a tattoo? No. But I likely will at some point, and it's also likely that you will never see it.

3) Faith: I have experienced and weathered several crises of faith, and my conclusion is that it doesn't stop from here on out. The ups and downs of faith are a pattern that will be experienced from now on. I'm an older and deeper thinker now. I've learned things and I've seen things that do not allow me to take my faith for granted anymore. Faith is hard work--which, I believe, is as it should be.

4) Philosophy: I don't believe in absolutes anymore. Very, very few of them at least. I am impatient with people who tend to see everything in black and white. I don't understand how you can be so sure about something to the point where you are unwilling to concede ANY doubt whatsoever. That, to me, is not a show of faith but a lack of humility. I don't believe in imposing my philosophy on other people. I live the way I live, and if someone else wants to live that way (or not) that is cool. In most things, I am deeply uninterested in trying to convince you that my way of doing things is the right way. I believe in spreading the Good News almost strictly through example.

5) Friendship:  I've had to learn to just let some things go and move on, but to always leave the door open, because it is important being open to friendship, new and old, and to let people choose YOU sometimes.

6) Love: I now know love. I've met and married my best friend. I have given birth to and fallen in love with my firstborn child. My heart is full, full, FULL of love for that friend and for that child. And oh, what a child! To have such purity in my home... it is priceless. To feel a sliver of what God must feel... It is a speechless gift.



I could never have understood any of these things 10 years ago. In fact, I heard 30-year-olds express some of these things and i thought, "That'll never be me." Well here I am, and I'm ok with it.