Sunset Diaries

Things to Know at 25(ish): Number 11

11. Don’t Get Stuck

This is the thing: When you hit 28 or 30, everything begins to divide. You can see very clearly two kinds of people. On one side, people who have used their 20s to learn and grow, to find God and themselves and their dreams, people who know what works and what doesn’t, who have pushed through to become real live adults. Then there’s the other kind, who are hanging onto college, or high school even, with all their might. They’ve stayed in jobs they hate, because they’re too scared to get another one. They’ve stayed with men or women who are good but not great, because they don’t want to be lonely. They mean to find a church, they mean to develop intimate friendships, they mean to stop drinking like life is one big frat party. But they don’t do those things, so they live in an extended adolescence, no closer to adulthood than when they graduated.

Don’t be like that. Don’t get stuck. Move, travel, take a class, take a risk. There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming. Don’t lose yourself at happy hour, but don’t lose yourself on the corporate ladder either. Stop every once in a while and go out to coffee or climb in bed with your journal.

Ask yourself some good questions like: “Am I proud of the life I’m living? What have I tried this month? What have I learned about God this year? What parts of my childhood faith am I leaving behind, and what parts am I choosing to keep? Do the people I’m spending time with give me life, or make me feel small? Is there any brokenness in my life that’s keeping me from moving forward?”

Now is your time. Walk closely with people you love, and with people who believe God is good and life is a grand adventure. Don’t get stuck in the past, and don’t try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven’t yet earned. 
Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life’s path.

- Shauna Niequist

Source: http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/whole-life/features/25956-11-things-to-know-at-25ish?start=1

Breakfast at Tiffany's

• Holly: Listen. You know those days when you get the mean reds?
• Paul: The "mean reds?" You mean, like the blues?
• Holly: No. The blues are because you're getting fat or it's been raining too long. You're just sad, that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid, and you don't know what you're afraid of. Don't you ever get that feeling?

From the wife of the diagnosed

Excerpt from The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova (Chapter 30 - Kate)

The doctor recentered the bronze lump on the document. It reminded me suddenly of that childhood game - rock, paper, scissors - where one element could win out over the other, but something else could always win out over the winner, a fascinating cycle. “It takes some times to develop any accurate diagnosis. But I believe Robert is probably experiencing…”

And then he told me the name of an illness, one I knew only vaguely and associated with nameless things, things that had nothing to do with me, things that people were given electric shock therapy for, or that caused them to kill themselves. I sat there for a few seconds, trying to fit these words to Robert, my husband. My whole body was bathed in cold. “Are you telling me that my husband is mentally ill?”

“We don’t really know what part of any condition is mental illness and what is environmental or a function of personality,” Dr. Q demured, and I hated him for the first time - he was hedging. “Robert may stabilize on this medication, or we may have to try other things. I think given his intelligence and his dedication to his art and his family, you can be hopeful that he’ll achieve quite a bit.”

But it was too late. Robert was no longer on Robert for me. He was someone with a diagnosis.I knew already that nothing would ever be the same, ever, no matter how much I tried to feel about Robert as I had before. My heart ached for him, but it ached even more for myself. Dr. Q had taken away the dearest thing I had, and he clearly didn’t know what that felt like. He had nothing to give me in return, just the view of his hand arranging his empty desk. I wished he’d had the grace to apologize.