After all the folderol and hauling over coal stops, what did I learn?

I often say that I don’t see any point in defining myself by what I am not, but thinking about it, I do exactly that all the time, when I compare myself now to myself in the past. I’m less emotionally reactive now, I think to myself, I’m not as attractive, I’m certainly not so promiscuous or as prone to falling in love. I’m less exuberant. I’m less argumentative, and not so damn certain I’m right.

I don’t think I want to define myself that way. I don’t want to define myself by what is absent, but by what is present.

So here is a list of a few of the things that I am more of.

1. I am sadder. This might not sound like a good thing, but in a profound way it informs almost everything else about me; instead of shoving my sadness into a corner, to break out and overwhelm me when I can no longer contain it, I let it be. I acknowledge it, and it coexists with my other feelings.

2. I am more moderate. I have gotten better at seeing multiple perspectives, and to appreciate that there often is more than one truth, as well as more than one way to look at things. While there is value in going hard, there is also value in going steady, and for now, I am finding more pleasure in going steady.

3. I am more vulnerable. With my sadness right out in the open, what do I have to lose by letting people see it? If there are multiple perspectives, what do I have to lose by trying on someone else’s? If error is an important part of how we learn, what do I have to lose by finding out I’m wrong? I have nothing to lose, but I stand to gain a lot.

4. I am more strong. I know that every heartbreak, little or big, is another bump in the road, and that I can grieve and feel lost when I need to feel those things, but ultimately I will persist, I will survive, and I will feel happiness again.

5. I am more present. It’s not that I don’t have hopes and dreams and plans for the future, but the future will have unexpected changes, some wanted and some unwanted. The path will diverge and it will almost certainly not be the path I imagined. I can’t predict other people’s actions or feelings or thoughts; I can barely predict my own, and I have a lifetime of experience at being me. So, I can feel certain that things will happen, good and bad, and they might be things I can influence but they will almost certainly not be things I can control. I can do my best to take care of the things that need to be taken care of in my life right now, including myself, my children, and my friends, but that is all I can do. And that is OK.

Ultimately, I am still me, and that is not going to change. My temperament is what it is; probably not set in stone, but probably to a pretty large degree determined before I was born by the fabulously complex assortment of alleles given to me by my mother and father. I can see both of them in me, and some elements I cherish while others I’m not so keen on. That isn’t to say that I am without choice; just to accept that the foundation is what it is, and how I change as I get older is more likely to be small shifts in the expression of the essence of me-ness, not the formation of a whole new me. So I am still exuberant, enthusiastic, passionate, opinionated, assertive, intemperate, and stubborn; just maybe, hopefully, a mellower version of all those things, a better version of me.