Baby J,
Hello darling. Happy Birthday! It is the great Sweet Sixteen, and I know how happy you are, especially because you are exactly sixteen days away from graduating from secondary school. You have lofty hopes about conquering the world and doing amazing things after QC, and I wish you all the very best.
The last time I wrote to you, I spoke about some things to expect as you grow and advised on things to hold on to. However, today I am taking a different turn. I want to tell you about myself at thirty-one. That is roughly twice your age as of today – a fully grown adult. If I were a butterfly on a chart in a biology lab, the teacher would point to me as an adult butterfly. Being an adult comes with its ups and downs, but most of the time, it is not easy to delineate the ups from the downs. All I know is that it is one long learning curve. I am learning to own my voice and values. I am trying to form lifelong healthy habits and trying to be a disciple of Christ. I want to confess that doing all of these things has not been easy, and I fear that I fail more than I succeed, even on the best days.
Over the years, I have come to understand that although money cannot buy happiness, it goes a long way to help me navigate the challenges of life. But money does not come easily. I have to sit eight hours at work, five days a week, to earn the money I need to build a life according to my taste. On the days I sit to count the cost, I wonder if it is worth it, but then I quickly realise that the question is not up for conversation because bills do not pay themselves. Other times, I find that I have such high taste that I am unsure whether to step it down a notch or remain on my high horse.
Nonetheless, I am pleased to say that I am now better at money maths. There is a high tendency to run completely crazy without this skill. A friend of mine once asked me about the next phase after adulthood, and I said, “Senility,” because dear girl, adulthood is the longest phase in one’s life. For the majority of people, it spans from completing one’s education to having a means to support one’s life and contribute to society (and the Church), including getting married, having kids and training them. So, it makes sense that some people grow senile in old age because what is this life but trouble?
That is why, now more than ever, I have learnt to cling to Jesus. Remember the day S. F. said her mother told her that as one grew older, one got closer to God? Well, I’m currently living that reality. In clinging to Jesus, I have found prayer to be more than routinely kneeling by my bedside to say, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” No. I have instead found a language of prayer in the Psalms because they are not neat. The writers of the Psalms teeter between themes that I am familiar with: hope and despair, faith and doubt, praise and anguish. These days, Psalms three, four, forty-two, and one-twenty-one have been my prayers. The more I pray these ancient prayers, the more I feel comfortable holding God by the ankle, badgering him for help.
I still have an existential angst to be and to do. I want to be out there doing the next great thing. I desire praise, applause and the admiration of polite society. I also want to motivate the whole world to be and to do as I have done. I know in theory that it is okay not to have my life go according to plan. In practice, however, particularly after mindlessly scrolling through my Instagram feed, I feel like absolute shit. This is where I question God. He has pressed me under his thumb so much that, out of exhaustion, I let him have his way. But his way is slow, arduous, confusing, terrible and frankly annoying. When, like Hamlet, I ask, ‘To be, or not to be?’ The answer God gives most of the time is ‘Not’. The problem with this response is that in the eyes of the world, it equates to being ambitionless, with an unrelenting desire to be a bystander. As a result, there is an endless loop of me striving to prove my worth, failing and asking God why – rinse and repeat. Thus, sometimes I get depressed and weary. Then I search for ways to escape reality by living the life of my dreams vicariously in the vlogs, pictures and reels of other people. That means more hours of mindlessly scrolling to numb the awareness of being a nobody.
There’s one more thing you need to know. I have contradictory feelings about marriage. Well-meaning society will tut at this. If it is any consolation to them, I also hear the tick-tock of my biological clock. While on one hand, I think marriage is a good idea and look forward to it, on the other hand, I have deep concerns. Somehow, I know I will be married someday. For now, I’m somewhere in between realising that lonely acrobatics is a thing and taking comfort in the fact that Sarah had Isaac at ninety years old.
I wish I could tell you that at thirty-one, I am a master’s degree holder, running the world in a cosy United Nations office. This used to be my dream life… the life you would soon be dreaming about in a few years. I wish I could say I am perfectly satisfied with the alternative life I have been gifted, but the truth is, I am not always satisfied. Yet, this is not to dampen your morale (not that it could anyway). In a few weeks, you will be hauled off to start A-Levels. That would be the second in a series of unplanned and unexpected circumstances (the first being getting into QC) that would lead you to me on this day. And I hope that when you get here, you can fall to the ground like Job and earnestly say, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21, ESV).
I love you, and I wish you the very best.
Sincerely,
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