25 and with aging anxiety, sounds familiar?
Greetings my dearest gentle reader, I am turning 25!
Today I am not writing much, just being honest, like always. Haha, okay this may be a stretch, this may be quite lengthy but I promise you it’s worthy it… or at least I hope it will be worth it for you by the end of the read.
Let’s get down to it!
Tomorrow is my birthday, I turn 25 years old. Yes, I do. haha, I do not know how to feel about it, given all the advice I have heard and things I have heard about 25, so let’s talk about ageing anxiety.
Before we go to the ageing anxiety, let me just acknowledge that for some reason, it is frowned upon to ask a lady her age. And indeed anyone else their age, particularly past a certain ag mark. I do not know which is the forbidden age past which we cannot tell our real age, but I hope to address some of that right here.
First and foremost, why are we ashamed of ageing? Why do we feel embarrassed to state our real ages? Yet as sure as the sun rises tomorrow you will surely e older than you are today? Why does it seem that older age is associated with shame and embarrassment or whatever feelings make people uncomfortable telling their true age?
Let me sound like Jesus for a minute, who of you, by worrying and hiding your real age will change even a thing about your lives? Will you freeze time so that you can remain only a certain age by worrying? Do you think if you do not admit, for instance, that you are now 35 and no longer under the “youth” age bracket that you will not be 35 anymore? Do you think the hair on your head won’t start turning grey if you do not say your real age out loud? Will you stop your skin from needing more extra attention if you are to still look youthful? Will you stop your back or legs from needing you to exercise more regularly just because you do not say your real age?
Also, why do we idolize youth so much? If I am not wrong majority of young people are broke, without jobs, or with jobs paying coins for remuneration, or with some serious identity issues, or metal health problems such as depression and stress, and awfully comparing themselves against their peers, or feeling like they should be at a better place than where they are right now … is this the youth we idolize? Is this truly what we want to remain like?
Do not get me wrong, I also know of young people doing amazing things, prospering like crazy, and driven with focus out of this world… haha I dare say some doing so well they make the rest of us young people feel like there is something wrong with us, or wonder where we went wrong, or just flat out feel bad about ourselves. And to those doing so well, by all means, we celebrate. Let credit be given where it is due.
I am just saying that majority of young people do not have it as good as the society tends to make it look like with how intensely youth is idolized.
Anyhow, I am not here to shame anyone who may be feeling some type of way from my comments of idolizing youth. I myself have been an awfully messed up human being in terms of how I have looked at age… I literally had my first ageing anxiety experience at the age of 17!
Yes, 17, ageing anxiety. Haha, you thought you were messed up? let me set your mind at ease.
So, 17. I was in high school, at Alliance Girls High School. You may be wondering how my school is important, haha, or even saying I am just flossing with old news. But it is important, Just bear with me.
As long as you are Kenyan, a normal Kenyan, not the super affluent ones who may not understand the language of normal folks, and normal dreams of schools like a national school, then you will really understand my thoughts here. Not that I am alienating anyone, No, haha, I need all the readers I can get.
What I mean is, if you are a normal Kenyan born and raised in Kenya; the natural progression of your life is typically; finish primary school, pass your KCPE(National Primary school exams), go to a good school, go to university, get a good job at a big company where you earn loads of big money, then get married, and then it goes silent. (no wonder many are poor at concepts like investments and savings and pension plans because this is not treated like a part of life, but that’s besides the point).
If I may go back a bot, the high school part in the life plan is always so major, many parents preferring to take their children to Boarding schools, and the marks you score in that primary school final exam are usually treated like life or death. Case in point, look how we celebrate the highest scoring students, and how much parents of students who “fail” even go around lying about the real marks of their children. Hehe, then we think a nation suffering from immense shame and fear of failure is a peculiar situation! If a parent is going to be so ashamed and embarrassed about the marks their merely 13/14 year old scores in an exam, what does that tell you about the many young people walking around with shame they cannot name and struggling with perfectionism they have no idea the origins of? Because when what you do is treated as not good enough to be said out loud often you will start becoming a performer in your life, only doing and saying things and acting in a way that may be deemed acceptable to others, and slowly by slowly, before one knows it, they can barely recognize the person inside them, nor can they keep up with their performed outer self, and there the identity crisis begins.
Anyways, you can tell I am big on perfectionism and how it can rob people the simple and even deep joys of life, because what it thrives on is shame, which is basically the feeling that you are not good enough so you have to act and perform like what would be deemed and seen as good enough; and in the process of performing we lose our true selves. Ask me, I know, I’ve been a performer for almost a decade.
Anyhow, I mentioned that I went to Alliance Girls because it is a National School and because I know how many myths our society has about such places. It is imagined that going to a national school like Alliance Girls means your life is perfect when there and it forever shall be perfect when you get out. It is easy to assume that the students in those school have the perfect experience, they are driven and are coming to change the world. I dare say even some people view the students in such schools as better than themselves… or the vice versa is true, that the students in such schools are met with a huge ego of being told to see themselves as better than everyone else, and thus treat others with contempt. I am not blind, I have seen both sides.
Anyways, the truth is that while Alliance Girls was great for me and I am forever grateful, there are things about that place that wounded me for life that I have been trying to unlearn and get out of my mind ever since we left.
the very first such pressure I have been trying to let go is that I must be exceptional, outstanding, above average, do extra ordinary things, and at no costs fail in life.
You may be wondering how that is a bad thing right? Well, it is a bad thing, take it from me, to think that at any given point in life you have to be more, and so you always have to be doing more, and thus any times of silence or slowness in your life take away from your being more, thus you cannot afford to be stressed, or below average at any cost. It is a distorted thought structure to think that you always have to be more, and so before you know it feel that you can only perform to be more because your real self that requires time to learn, unlearn, fail, grieve, heal etc has no room to exist because they will be interfering with the grand plans of what is “naturally” expected of you when you have been to such institutions.
I am not purporting to say that everyone who went there, and such schools, and Ivy League institutions have a pressured and distorted sense of self that never allows them to have and enjoy peace in life, no. I am just saying that I was personally not ready for how much pressure I would feel from being at Alliance Girls, and because of it I have been lost in life for quite sometime refinding myself. How was I lost you may wonder? Very many ways, I just may not delve into all that right now.
Anyways, so Alliance Girls, pressure, fear of failure, and ageing anxiety at 17… what about it you may be wondering?
Okay, so, another blessing I have had in my life is this unshakable belief that even before the world began I was created, made and destined for nice and great things in life. This belief in me has been so great, I have never had doubt of it being limited by resources or where I was born, I was just not created to have anything less than the very best and whatever my heart desires. Self belied and where some of this has been thoroughly shaken is also a story for another day, but my faith has been so consistent when it comes to when I choose to believe for something, that by God’s grace I have often gotten exactly what I have wanted.
One such unshakeable desire and belief was that I wanted to go to a National school, to Alliance Girls High School in particular, that I didn’t care how I would get in there, I just knew I would. Not even the school fee shook me and trust me it was quite something, for me not even my parents financial limitations were a problem for me. I just knew God created me, he made me, he brought me here, it was his business to ensure I got in there and had an easy time as far as the financial aspect of it was concerned. I guess my faith was so great that the same year our KCPE results were coming out is the same year God inspired Equity Bank Kenya to be giving scholarships in large numbers… so I got my results the same year the Bank released the large scale Wings to Fly Scholarship program for high schoolers.
That is how I got into Alliance Girls high school and never once ever worried about my school fees. Haha, it was a good thing because everything else ended up stressing me, because I do not think I had gotten the right mental told for how to cope in an environment where everyone you see is as good as you are if not better, and so my mind was forever in a fight or flight comparison mode, meaning that for the most part I measured my worth, smartness, talent, beauty, leadership, skills and even general charisma as compared to the other girls, not seeing mine as just enough because it was.
Anyways, the thing about comparison and feeling insufficient is that you often feel so inadequate, so you measure everything you see and hear against yourself to see if you measure up. May be this doesn’t make sense so let me try an example;
I lost myself in that school so much…. so much so that when motivational speakers came to school, instead of taking what they were saying as tools for how I can grown and improve myself, my mind interpreted as condemnation against me showing how much I was falling short. For example, when a motivational speaker said you need to be disciplined to succeed in life, I saw it as a pointer to how much I wasn’t successful in life because I wasn’t disciplined enough. So even any attempts I made to be “disciplined” were often as punishment against myself for not already being disciplined enough. I was often so angry and mad at myself for not being “enough”… Risper why are you not an early riser enough, why are you not hardworking enough, why don’t you study enough… why do other girls in your form one class ALREADY know how to swim and you don’t. I was simply never enough, and that is when my inner saboteur started getting so loud and ran my life, and I confused it for the real me… so I forever felt like shit in that school. Of course you can see it is not because of the school itself, but I was just too mentally unequipped to see myself for who I really was.
So, the Equity Bank Scholarship and my ageing anxiety at 17? Haha, what happened was, every single year during the second term holidays, Equity Bank organized this motivational speakers conference week at Kenyatta University. This conference was for all Wings to Fly Scholars (those sponsored by Equity Bank for their high school education) from all over the country. I would like you to put a pin on my relationship with motivational speakers, that every word they said was processed in my mind as a standard against which I was forever falling short …
So here comes the Equity Bank motivational speakers week conferences at Kenyatta University every year… everyone sponsored by the bank was of course at the very minimum academically smart, but for the most part others were simply what would be considered exceptional in very way… they were club leaders, or club founders, school captains, essay writers competing internationally and going abroad … etc etc. Here I was as Risper, smart, talented, a natural leader, a gifted orator and writer and singer … but I couldn’t see any of that because of the fear of failure I had, and my distorted view of myself as insufficient that I couldn’t go out and just do all of these things. Instead, the few times I did try to for example do poetry in school, my mind approached it as, “I am doing this poetry so that by association it can make me great”… instead of realizing that literally, I am a poet an orator and a writer without having to try. I thought these things were external to me and I had to work so hard to get them.
If I may pose here a bit, could you, yes you, my dear reader, be caught up in such a messed up way of thinking and seeing yourself? Could you be thinking that you are not great, so you have to do great things to be great by association? Could you be thinking that you are too small and insignificant so you are forever feeling small and think your only redemption is to be working with big people and in big places so that hopefully at some point you will become worthy and significant by association? Haha, my fellow students at Kenya School of Law, could you b trying to work at a “BIG Law firm” so that it makes you great because unknown to you, you think you are nit good enough except by being associated with places and things the society has labelled as good enough? Just so you know, yes you whoever you are and whatever the state of your mind is as you read this, nothing from the outside is coming to make you great or worthy because worth is not an external thing you have to earn and compete for … doing great and big things will not make you great, no. You will do big and great things because you are big and great, I hope everyone gets that distinction.
Anyways, haha, I know I said this would be small and short, but it is clearly not and won’t be short. I have got so much passion in my heart for people understanding this level of truth around how we look at and see ourselves because I have been a victim of looking at myself as insufficient, only thinking only doing big and great things will make me as such by association. If I had my way I I would make everyone read this until they got the twisted lies about themselves out of their minds.
Haha, and to think I used to think I have no gift or anything at all in my life through out high school and a bit of campus, yet here I am worried I will write too much until it’s too long for anyone to read… not that I have nothing to write. Oh, the lies we have believed about ourselves from distorted perspectives…
My dearest reader love, do not give up on me though. haha, I promise the incoming few paragraphs will bring us to the conclusion of this article.
So anyways, how I git ageing anxiety at 17 was that, during these Equity Bank conferences during our second term holidays in high school, the Bank would bring us all these young motivational speakers and young people doing great things, that insisted on how much we could do with our youth. There were so many “Firsts” among these people the bank brought to motivate us… the first to go to Brown, Yale, Harvard, Princeton etc… There were so many of them with awards of the “Youngest to” … The Youngest Person from Kenya to do some big project, The Youngest team leader for a Stanford Research program, the youngest young person from Africa to address the UN development Forum, the Youngest … etc. You get the point. Basically, the way the speeches were made made it look like being Young and the Youngest at something was an achievement.
Remember that these motivational speeches are being made to a Risper who sees what motivational speakers were saying as a pointer to what and where I was falling short at. So these speeches and achievements of “Youngest” to my broken and naïve mind read as that, if I was to achieve anything and be great in my life I had to do it when I was extremely young. That whatever happened, I for example could not afford to not have started a club, or been a captain or … whatever, just something, but I could only be great if I was youngest at something exceptional.
Of course the Banks intention had not been to terrorize us into shrinking and seeing ourselves as insufficient when they brought us these people, but my mind interpreted everything as the World and the Bank would forever see me as small or even forget about me if I did not do any such great things and do them when I was extremely young. So when I saw a need in school and wanted to do something about it, I saw it as my opportunity to “finally do something great as a young person” , as opposed to recognizing that I was just great, and good at seeing gaps, and naturally unable to sit around and not do something about things that are below per. So the ideas I git felt like they are external and like I have forced them into being, and as if my natural normal self could not think about them, not recognizing the whole time that me as a problem solver was my most natural and normal self, not some external thing I was trying to achieve.
Needless to say, with all this pressure I felt to not fail at these “external ideas” I got, I ended up with such an immense fear of failure that it was so great this fear, I ended up paralyzed and unable to execute most of them. Yes, it is very possible to have fear paralysis that you do not even start what you know in your heart and mind ought and needs to be done.
So anyways, with this fear of failure, and now of course actual failing when I didn’t do some of these things I had wanted to do, at 17 I felt I was already too old to do anything and it felt like my time and window of being great was running out, that at 17, I felt I had already failed in life. I was so afraid to turn 18 because I felt like it removed me from this window of being great while “young”, that I started getting such deep anxiety with age. My worst feared age was probably 21, because I felt at 21 “SHOULD” have already done certain great things ….
Honestly I do not know what my mind imagined I was supposed to be doing for the rest of my life if “my only window for success” was when I was “young”… for e eve 25 felt like such old age… that at 25 I do not know what I was expecting or “supposed” to have been, but yes, my 17 year old mind did say my window foe success was closing in, and time was running out, and I was headed to failure in life if I didn’t do “something” quick.
I did try to do things by 21 actually, and did travel internationally a bit etc… but it all left me hollow because I was trying to do these things so they could make me “great”, so they could make me “something” … But the truth is that it is not until therapy at the ages 22/23/24 there did I discover that I felt miserable then because I was chasing things so I could find my worth because I thought worthy could only be found outside of me, and not the opposite.
SO anyways, my dearest gentle reader, the reason why I have used “25 and with ageing anxiety” as the title for this article is because I know many people likely read my work are near that age or those older than that can also in a way relate to feeling some type of way about 25 … but I actually have no ageing anxiety whatsoever anymore.
If anything, I am grateful for old age. I am grateful for time, and for the increase of time. I am grateful because it is by time, and by getting older that for instance I have gotten opportunities to do therapy and read books that have set me free in a lot of ways in how I see life, how I wee myself, what I view and thing of success as looking like …
I have boldly written that my age as of tomorrow, 20th May 2022 is 25, because being able to say it out loud in and of itself for me is a testimony and a miracle, I never thought I would be able to be okay being 20 anything in my life if you asked me at 17. Being not ashamed of my age in and of itself is such an expression of this inside out liberty I have experienced, I am experiencing and know I will only keep experiencing with age, that I want to celebrate it out loud.
Nothing here has been written to show how “successful” I am, or “how well” I am doing mentally, to make anyone feel bad about themselves. This is not that use of “social media to rub your success in faces of others” … haha no. If anything I actually still have a lot to do and build because it is like the first time I am able to at least see myself correctly for the first time in my life. I am also not writing this to jinx anything in my life, haha, hapana(no)…hiyo pepo ishidwo (haha, those who understand our Kenyan French gerrit)… I just am a firm believer in that may be sharing our own struggles, stories, and shames may help another person feel and be seen, and hopefully someone that hears this and relates may finally be given a breather to see themselves as God intended and finally be free and hopefully finally start living, freely, mentally, psychologically and spiritually. Because we are all created to live freely and abundantly, and having a distorted view of self largely steals that part of our joy of living.
Being able to finally feel like I have found and still am dining my joy from this kind of knowledge is such a big testimony to me, that I want to share here with you. Because hopefully by you too knowing this, or knowing this on behalf of someone you can share with/ you know needs/ may need to know/hear this brings us all closer to living as was intended- freely, abundantly and joyfully. Because it is completely true that when you know the truth, it sets you free, and when you don’t, ignorance and distorted views thrive in making us miserable, so choose to keep getting informed.
Haha, thank you for bearing with me and this long read. I hope there has been at least a thin or two for you to think about or share with someone … I wish you the very best in finding the right perspective of your life, and of unlearning any distorted views of life you may have had or still been having. You can count on me sharing more of what I am learning… If I have to go foe therapy again I shall so I can bring you as much truth to set you free as the capacity you have.
For now, bye from my end. Don’t take life too seriously, as for being great you shall be my dear, it’s just a matter of time, so embrace time(and increase in age).
Happy birthday to me:) I am so so glad and stoked to have shared this part of myself with you.
Xo, cheers to 25!
