Revisiting the man in the mirror

My 30th birthday came and went a couple weeks ago. I kept thinking about how I'd commemorate the occasion on the blog, what life-changing revelations I could share. Then I remembered something I wrote to mark my last big occasion, college graduation. [See "Some college lessons shouldn't be learned," The Post, 5-22-1997]

At the time, I was 21 years old and preparing to graduate from college. Little did I know I had three and a half years in Lima, failed journeys to Savannah and Delaware and a delightful three years in Northern Virginia ahead of me. I just wanted whatever I thought might make me happy.

What might I say to that man in the mirror today? What wisdom could I pass along to the 21-year-old me, whose legacy left at OU was a "mythical, wise-cracking, cynical shell of a man"?

Don't change for anyone.

That man tried too hard to turn into someone else, someone more acceptable by his peers. Bits of pieces of his true self remained there, no doubt. But the modern me spent much of his 20s recapturing the 1994 self, with his idealism, his occasional charm, his friendly awkwardness. I've realized it's OK to not fit into a group.

I've also realized wonderful friends last a lifetime, so long as you put the effort into keeping them. Sometimes I've failed at this, but the really good ones will always welcome you back.

Most of all, and oddly enough most recently, I've discovered there's a person out there who will love you for exactly who you are. The path to find that person can be challenging and frustrating. You'll give up several times between here and there. Once you find her, though, never let her go. Soulmates are hard to come by, and the best you can do is try to show her every day just how much she means to you.

It's funny how your perceptions of a milestone can change on a dime. A month and a half ago, I was dreading 30 like the plague. College had been about finding out who I was. The 20s had been about refining who I was. The 30s looked like a desperate era of loneliness and mourning that things didn't work out as you'd planned.

Now I have a better understanding of the purpose for my 30s. I'll spend each day trying to share more of myself with the people I care about.

A line from that 1997 column caught my attention again: "The only goal in his life is to be missed when he is gone." That's just as true now as it was when it was written some eight years ago, yet its meaning is so different now. At that point, it was superficial, wanting to be missed for my work accomplishments. Now it has meaning. Now I want to be missed for who I am and how I've affected the lives around me.

I'm off to a good start, and I'm looking forward to making the most of this new decade of life.