Pulling 30 Fourteen

More than anything,
it's the increased
awareness of your
own history that
begins to pull itself,
after three decades.

You begin to think,
is that really
what I've accomplished,
is that really all
that I seem to
have become?

It's not sadness
about success,
really, so much
as a personal sense
of pride, which
I believe is the
only true measuring
rod in life, the
only thing we
should care about.

I'm not talking
about pride
in a biblical sense,
not Pride, but
a sense of satisfaction,
not in wanting more
things or wanting less,
but the cumulative
perspective, the sense
of self, whether this
might really be
all I am capable
of being.

I think,
and just
because
of that,
I am?

How far beyond
that have I
managed to get,
how far along
my own personal
growth, have
I gotten?

How much do
I need to
depend
on others,
and how much
have I
assumed
for myself?

This is the pull
I speak of,
the full and
necessary weight,
what binds us
to the earth
and our own minds,
the self in the self.

It is a momentous
occasion, I think,
pulling 30.