{"id":1179,"date":"2005-04-24T18:21:08","date_gmt":"2005-04-24T22:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2005\/04\/24\/thoughts-on-turning-30\/"},"modified":"2005-04-24T18:21:08","modified_gmt":"2005-04-24T22:21:08","slug":"thoughts-on-turning-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2005\/04\/24\/thoughts-on-turning-30\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on turning 30"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Today is my 30th birthday.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure exactly how I feel about this.  I don’t really feel
\nany older than I did yesterday or a couple of months ago, and I don’t
\nreally feel much older than when I was 27 or 28, to be honest.<\/p>\n

(My mom, however, called today, and she said that she doesn’t feel like
\nshe can have a kid who’s thirty.  And I actually sort of remember
\nwhen she turned thirty.  But she remembered it was a Thursday, and
\nabout 10.30 in the morning, and it was kind of cloudy, but she saw a
\nlittle bit of sun through the window in the delivery room.)<\/p>\n

Perhaps I’m supposed to start thinking about mortality or something
\nlike that, and I guess I am in some way, in that I have now had three
\ndecades of time to do something with life, and so one might want to
\nhave something to point at.  One of the first thoughts that comes
\nto me is, “God, I am STILL in school.”  I’ve only been out of
\nschool for a year or two since I turned five.<\/p>\n

Here’s the thing.  One of the themes that’s come up a bit in
\ntalking with my spiritual director is the need most of us (all of us?)
\nhave to “do” something, “make” something, “impact” something.  I
\ncertainly feel this need, in almost all the areas of my life —
\nphysical, mental, professional, spiritual.  What do I have to show
\nfor my efforts?  What output comes from my input?<\/p>\n

And that’s the trap of our world, whether because of the particular
\nlogic of the capitalist ethos, some innate human nature, or whatever
\nexplanation you like.  But perhaps we are most fully ourselves,
\nmost fully human, most fulfilled when we simply are.<\/p>\n

Thirty’s a big marker only if I’m looking to validate or put a stamp of
\naccomplishment on my life so far.  But maybe thirty just is if I
\njust am.<\/p>\n

Maybe more on this later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is my 30th birthday. I’m not sure exactly how I feel about this.  I don’t really feel any older than I did yesterday or a couple of months ago, and I don’t really feel much older than when I was 27 or 28, to be honest. (My mom, however, called today, and she said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-day2day"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-j1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}