I turned 40 earlier this week. It doesn’t feel different from 39.

Our entire family went together to a local park and did a hike, then we went out for ice cream. The hike was dreamy both because we were all there and because the weather and scenery were beautiful.

I had this idea in my head that I was going to write a thoughtful, reflective, and timely post about turning 40, but instead I spent the days leading up to my birthday feeling alternately ambivalent and depressed.

I have always been a bit of a late bloomer. My stinky attitude would have me believe all the ladies I see who seem to be wiser, more confident, and more balanced than I am are just good fakers.

Maybe they really ARE wiser, more confident, and have the secret to life balance, and perhaps they are further along the journey than I am despite the fact that I’m older.

I’m a competitive person. The Chaplain has helped me temper that tendency. Even so, it rears its head regularly. I frequently catch myself comparing myself to others (or my idea of others) on the journey of life and feeling like I’m lagging behind on maturity.

What makes me a late bloomer? It just feels like I figure things out later than would be ideal.

My kids have especially been the proving ground for my weaknesses, especially selfishness/selflessness and the balance between the two (that fuzzy line we call Self Care), with marriage being a close second for pushing me to grow.I’ve had a tremendous burst of personal growth over the past couple of years. Reading Daniel Pink’s When, the author says research shows people have a burst of self growth and personal productivity the last year of each decade of life. The years that end in 9 are super-achieving years, when first marathons are run and people make big life changes.

In that regard, I’m solidly average, although rather than big life changes, the biggest change I made was to change the way I think, and that’s not always obvious from the outside.

Perhaps the most profoundly depressing part of turning 40 is not realizing that your life is half over, but that you are only just beginning to figure out how little you have figured out.

I’ve accelerated reading Richard Rohr’s The Immortal Diamond, to work through my existential angst, and it’s helping. The books about race I’ve been reading (Currently, Between the World and Me, by Ta-nehisi Coates), have kept me in a near-constant state of grief.

On my birthday, I gave myself the gift of not consuming any news.

It was a good choice. As was the 2.5 mile hike around the lake, a lake we have been bathing at for years without ever walking the trail that winds around its perimeter. It was incredibly satisfactory to stand on the opposite side of the lake from the beach and take in the scenery from the other side. I was reminded how much we can miss when we keep going to the same places and doing the same things.

I don’t have any good life advice at the cultural halfway point of life. Based on the ladies on both sides of my family, it’s doubtful that this IS the halfway point for me – I probably have several more years before I hit that. Maybe by then I’ll be more OK with the idea that I’ll probably never have it all figured out, whatever “it” is.

Earlier this year in Tobago, I got to participate in Carnival for the first time ever, something that has been on my bucket list for over ten years. Later, I watched back some video of the experience, and saw my body from the outside, a painfully stiff and self conscious person.

I felt a burst of compassion for the self-conscious girl I saw. The body I’m stuck in isn’t at all the way I want to feel or how I am inside. I’ve said many times that my anxiety makes me feel like my skin is on too tight, which the video made all too clear. It LOOKED like my skin was on too tight.

I had to pivot away from what I may have looked like to others and the profound insecurity I still frequently feel, and remember in spite of the discomfort I felt in my body how fun and energizing the experience was.I don’t WANT to be anxious. I don’t want to care what others think. I certainly don’t want to wait until 50 or 60 to get to the point where Frankly, I Don’t Give A Damn. Some part of me is sure I will NEVER stop feeling self-conscious in public and that I’ll go on being socially awkward to the grave.

That is a possibility.

That may be the beauty of getting older: the ambiguity. I was talking to a friend recently and she said she doesn’t say “never” very much anymore, and I agree that this is true.

In our younger teen and adult years it can be very easy to declare that we know exactly who we are and what we will or won’t ever do. Now, we realize we’re just a few degrees away from all the possible variations of ourselves and others. We’re more connected and alike than we like to admit – both to those others and our alternate selves.

By the time you get closer to the 1/3 or halfway point, you start to realize you can’t be sure of as much, and knowing that leads to compassion and empathy you weren’t capable of before.

I’m still the unquenchable and passionate person I was earlier in life. I hate feeling limited yet I often get stuck in thought and worry ruts.  Having had my ass kicked and my selfishness checked several times (a day, a week, a year) by family life, current events, and parenting, I understand brokenness differently, and I’m able to surrender to gratitude and delight more than ever.

Like every other year in my life so far, life is pretty OK and also contains room for improvement.