Mal’s 25th Birthday Reflection
By Mallory McPherson-Wehan
For my 25th birthday I was planning to post a list of my accomplishments this year that I had written up during a quiet moment at work. The more I thought about it, the less and less good of an idea it seemed. I first tried to get to the motive of posting a list of accomplishments. Was it because I wanted to prove to the people that follow me that I’d had a productive year? Was it to prove to myself that I’d used the year wisely? My immediate gut reaction was neither seemed an incredibly compelling reason to post, especially with my new analysis of the myth of productivity. Why did it matter that everyone knew my accomplishments for the year? Do people even care?
A second reason to post was that I wanted validation that people were impressed with me. I’m sure I’d have friends comment and text me how impressed they were with how I spent my year. That would feel good, right? External validation always felt good. But did it matter whether other people were impressed with me if I wasn’t sure I was impressed with myself? Would the two cancel each other out? I wasn’t sure.
A new thought arose during this processing. Were these accomplishments really emblematic of how I spent my year? Or did I just cherry pick the ones I thought would be the most impressive? I looked at my list again. I hadn’t put on the list the accomplishment I was most proud of which was starting to heal my relationship to food and fitness. It didn’t fit with the list which was all tangible certifications, degrees, or big events. I thought back to my recent reading with Janet, a medium, who told me that it seemed I masked my insecurities with certifications and degrees because I wanted everyone around me to think I was smart. Fair. Did I list things that really made me feel accomplished or did I just list things I thought would make me seem accomplished? Now I was in a rabbit hole.
I had been listening to a podcast yesterday about question-thinking, a concept where you reframe and revisit questions to get to the deeper problems and solutions in your life. Maybe that was where all these questions were coming from. I went down the list in my head and quickly had a realization. How could I possibly post this list of accomplishments without giving credit to all the people who helped me get there? Oh no. Now it was just going to turn into a laundry list of all the people I was grateful for. That never makes for good social media content. But really, I looked at each accomplishment and could immediately attribute a large proportion of each accomplishment to my friends, family, colleagues, etc. Sure, I played a role in each but how could I possibly post a list of accomplishments and ignore the people who got me there?
I began thinking about how this list didn’t encompass any of my failures which arguably taught me more than most of the accomplishments. If this birthday post was meant to be symbolic of my year, why was I not including the most pivotal experiences, friendships, and failures? So here we are. I have my list of accomplishments, but I’m not going to share them with you. First off, upon second reflection, I don’t think they are an accurate depiction of my year. Secondly, I would be showing the list to you for the wrong reasons, for external validation and status. So instead, I’ll say this. I’ve grown a ton this year. Maybe more than in my whole life. I’ve started asking more questions (evidenced above). I’ve stopped accepting that things have to be the way they are. I’ve had a lot of really hard conversations with friends and family members. I’ve cried a lot. But I’m happy and pondering life and the world and feel rich in knowledge, love, and life. Hope 25 keeps up.
