As you get older, much of what felt important when you were younger, somehow seems less deserving of the time and energy that it used to expend.
Like worrying about appearances.
Worrying about what others think.
Worrying whether you’ve done something wrong.
Even just reeling off the endless possibilities for pointless preoccupation that prevail in the teens and twenties, for the mere purpose of this article - is exhausting.
What’s less exhausting however - maybe even liberating - is the age-acquired art of giving less hoots about all that is futile, stupid, beyond our control… or all of the above.
Whether this skill is an offshoot to that negative correlation between age and tolerance for the trivial, OR a symptom of the gradual dethroning of ‘expectation’ as sovereign of personal expression - is open to debate.
None of this, of course, is to advocate apathy (because it’s important to still care), nor is it about exercising brashness when flexing those ‘boundary’ muscles.
What it is, instead, is about being more selective in what allows our attention and time to be diverted from what REALLY matters.
It’s about drawing more lines, and under more things, than you might have realised needed underscoring.
Fizzled out friendships
Old identities
Unfulfilled ambitions
Equally, it’s about never doubting for a moment, that sporadic spectacle-making is both a cause - and consequence- of ‘being your own leading lady.’