I love being 27. It truly feels like a great age. I am still young. No grey hairs. No fine lines on my face. It's still easy to keep off those extra pounds. I think I'm finally starting to look my age rather than like a 14 year old (most of the time...I still get people butting in front of me in line because they think I'm just a kid waiting for their parent). Yup, overall 27 is pretty good.
I also like 27 because I am finally starting to know and understand who I am. From the time I hit adolescence until about a year or two ago, I've struggled with knowing exactly who I am. And if I did have a sense of who I was, I was constantly asking "is who I am good enough? Is it ok to be that person?" At 27, I'm finally finding words to describe who I am and the confidence to own that person fully and joyfully. I love me!
I am a person who is constantly thinking but who does not always have words to express what I'm thinking. If I am asked a question out of the blue, I'll likely have nothing to share (much of the reason I dislike and dread most casual phone conversations!). But if I'm given time to think about the question or have had time to think about something, I'll be much more likely to have something to talk about!
What do I constantly think about? Well, alot of what I think about is people. Relationships. What makes people who they are. Why people do what they do and act the way they act. What makes me who I am? What has contributed to making me who I am? There are always reasons...
Family plays a huge roll in who people are. As I was growing up, I always just assumed that families were all the same...and obviously they were all like mine! (Well, it wasn't quite that simple. Not all families were the same. But all the families who were happy and functional were certainly just like mine!) Obviously I've known that this isn't quite the case for a while now. But as I explore relationships more and more, I'm realizing just how different families can be and how certain subtleties between even two functional families can produce vastly different values and actions in the family members.
Because I grew up in a family that tells stories, I am someone who loves to listen to and tell stories. When my family sat at the dinner table, we told stories. Stories in the form of jokes (thanks Reader's Digest!). Stories about our days. Stories about whatever. I am someone who looks for the story in every situation. I don't so much focus on the theoretical side of things, nor the theological side. I am always on the lookout for the practical, real-life lesson. (This probably contributes to my relational, who-people-are thoughts to some degree. It all comes back to people's stories.)
Because I grew up in a family that valued time together, I now value my family time very highly. It's not the same if everyone isn't there. It's special to spend one-on-one time with members of the family, of course, but there is a certain depth to the joy that comes when everyone in the family is together that's just not the same when someone is missing.
I've also started to value my introverted personality in the past couple years like I hadn't before. I used to think that it was something to be overcome instead of seeing it as the gift it is. While I still need to push myself sometimes because getting out is healthy for me, whether or not I always feel like it (like eating my veggies), I also give myself permission to care for myself by giving myself space and letting myself say no to some social opportunities. But I've written about this before so I'll carry on...
It's a never-ending project, the study of one's self. How well do you know yourself? In what ways did the family you grew up in influence who you are today? How does who you are affect your relationships? Are you comfortable in your own skin? When all the noise and distractions are gone and you're alone with yourself, do you embrace that time or reach for a distraction? It's fascinating to spend some time thinking about these things, or at least I think so! And I'd say 27 is a pretty good age to do this as I've got a fairly decent history in which my personality has been developed and still I have the rest of my life to live with myself and put my knowledge to good use :)
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