i'm okay with that

This is a great article, summarizing what most are afraid to admit:

The Referendum is a phenomenon typical of (but not limited to) midlife, whereby people, increasingly aware of the finiteness of their time in the world, the limitations placed on them by their choices so far, and the narrowing options remaining to them, start judging their peers’ differing choices with reactions ranging from envy to contempt. The Referendum can subtly poison formerly close and uncomplicated relationships, creating tensions between the married and the single, the childless and parents, careerists and the stay-at-home. It’s exacerbated by the far greater diversity of options available to us now than a few decades ago, when everyone had to follow the same drill. We’re all anxiously sizing up how everyone else’s decisions have worked out to reassure ourselves that our own are vindicated — that we are, in some sense, winning.

It’s especially conspicuous among friends from youth. Young adulthood is an anomalous time in people’s lives; they’re as unlike themselves as they’re ever going to be, experimenting with substances and sex, ideology and religion, trying on different identities before their personalities immutably set. Some people flirt briefly with being freethinking bohemians before becoming their parents. Friends who seemed pretty much indistinguishable from you in your 20s make different choices about family or career, and after a decade or two these initial differences yield such radically divergent trajectories that when you get together again you can only regard each other’s lives with bemused incomprehension.

http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/the-referendum/?8ty&emc=ty

I’ve been anxiously anticipating that “bemused incomprehension” for some time now because sooner or later, there will be a tipping point year when everyone and anyone I know will have converted to the other side, and the quirks that once amused will soon be met with I-know-better pity, instead.  Even now, the momentum is shifting, and I find myself stunned at times when I recognize just how different things have become for each of us.  Maybe they’ve changed, maybe I’ve changed.  Maybe they’ve turned into one of THEM (whoever they may be), maybe I have.  Maybe we really mean all we say; most likely we don’t know which is which.  And more than ever, we seem to be constantly aware of and critical of others’ choices… is it because we care?  Or is it because of the “jealousy with a halo” so aptly described?  Can we really just be happy for someone else without feeling something else  for ourselves in the process?

At any given time, if we are sound of mind, we make our decisions based on the information we currently have and the circumstances we’re currently in.  But information is imperfect, and circumstances influence faculty of reason.  As such, we don’t always make the best decisions, once we reevaluate the choice with more clarity and wisdom, but it is our own doing, and there’s no use kicking yourself after.  Learn, move on, do better.

The other day, my friend Paula introduced me to the mantra:  I’m okay with that.  Hippy as this may sound, she had discovered just how powerful and peaceful it is to let go of the self-inflicted emotional crap and be truly accepting.  It’s a really difficult thing to be genuinely happy for someone else, especially if it comes at a loss to you in some metaphysical manner, but it’s a noble, strive-worthy thing.  In the meantime, address your insecurities and just learn to be okay with things, people, life.  It’ll save a lot of therapy dollars and make you a much more enjoyable person.

Now, if only that wasn’t easier said than done.