Wind down the window, says Wendy Saunt

By Wendy Saunt

“Enjoy every stage of your life” is perhaps the single wisest piece of advice anyone can receive, at any age. It’s particularly pertinent, though, if the person it’s aimed at is in their 30s and thinks their life’s over.  

Having just nudged over from the safety of my mid-30s into the yawning abyss of my late 30s, it seems that this is the decade when you realise your perpetual youth doesn’t exist and the screaming fear sets in.

On a side rant, this is probably because we have a bad habit of fetishising youth and writing off experience as a peculiar affliction of those over, say, 25, but that’s not much help when you’re assessing your loss of collagen in the cold morning light. 

But that’s the point right there: it’s very easy to think about what you haven’t got - be it collagen, the boyfriend/job/flat of your dreams, or even just the sense that time’s on your side. It’s far harder to think about all you have – experiences, memories, nuances and, my God, polished edges, all garnered from the good and the bad bits of your life.

So, as much as this is going to make me sound like a Paulo Coehlo-reading world of pain I’m going to say it anyway: life is a journey. Wind the window down and stick your head out. 

Wendy Saunt is a interior designer, writer and art consultant. She lives in London. You can follow her on Twitter @Wendy__Saunt

Published as part of Not The Style Pages' SpeedBlog series