I Still Want More

There is something women are supposed to become as we get older that I am apparently still failing at.

Satisfied.

I don’t mean grateful. I am deeply grateful. This entire week has reminded me just how much there is in my life to be grateful for. I looked around a table filled with my children, grandchildren and people I love on my fiftieth birthday and knew, without needing to talk myself into anything, that I have a beautiful life.

Somewhere along the way, though, gratitude got tangled up with the idea that eventually we’re supposed to stop wanting so damn much. Especially women. We reach a certain age and ambition is supposed to soften into contentment. Desire should get quieter. Appreciate what you have. Slow down. Stop chasing. Enjoy the simple things.

There is wisdom in some of that. I’ve spent enough of my life moving the finish line to know it’s a miserable way to live. I’ve reached goals I was certain would change something inside me, only to discover I was still standing there afterward with the same nervous system, the same questions and another goal already forming in my head.

Fifty years has corrected a lot of my math.

Apparently, it hasn’t done a damn thing about my appetite.

I still want the ranch.

Sixteen-year-old René is somewhere inside me with her arms crossed, wondering what the hell has taken so long. She had very specific plans involving Montana, preferably somewhere around Seeley Lake or Missoula, a large piece of land, horses and enough sky to make a person feel very small in the best possible way.

She’s still waiting. I’m still looking.

There are also so many books I haven’t written yet. Stories I don’t know how to tell. Ideas scribbled everywhere. Subjects I haven’t even discovered I’m going to become obsessed with. I want more stages, more rooms where I get to teach, more conversations that change something for somebody and more work that feels worth getting out of bed for.

And yes, I want more money.

I no longer expect money to make me happy. Been there. Tested that theory. Money is a tool, and at fifty I can think of a hell of a lot of things I’d like to build, experience, create, give and support with that tool. I like financial security. I like freedom. I like choices. I like generosity. I also like nice hotels, so let’s not get unnecessarily holy about this.

Travel is probably where some of that money is going.

I want to travel more, but I think I want to travel differently now. Less racing through places collecting photographs and checking things off a list. More staying long enough to figure out where the little grocery store is, find the restaurant nobody put on the tourist list and have a favorite place for coffee before it’s time to leave.

Travel has always rearranged something in me. The world gets enormous again, which is useful when my problems have started believing they’re the largest things in it.

Maybe that’s why I’ve also been thinking about art lately. Single René in her thirties went to concerts and plays and symphonies. She followed curiosity out the door simply because something sounded interesting. I don’t want her schedule, her drama or her eleven boyfriends back. Jesus Christ, no. One man is plenty of administration.

I do miss some of her carefreeness.

There are pieces of myself I’ve become so busy taking care of life that I’ve stopped taking out to play. I’d like to change that.

My body belongs somewhere in this conversation too because I’d really like to be stronger at sixty than I am at fifty. I want to keep doing yoga, moving, stretching, sweating and healing some of what I’ve asked this body to carry. Seven babies. Grief. Trauma. Stress. Years when I treated sleep and food like optional equipment because something else seemed more important.

For the record, I also want more sex.

Good sex. Slow sex. Connected sex. Lots of kissing. The kind where nobody is in a hurry and for a little while there isn’t a business to run, a child who needs something, laundry waiting somewhere or a phone making noise.

I’m fifty, not dead.

Mostly, I want more life with Craig. More mornings. More trips. More stupid conversations that make us laugh. More years of learning each other. More of those moments when I catch him looking at me with that expression he gets and realize there is still something incredibly tender about being loved by someone who actually knows you.

My children are becoming people I get to know in entirely different ways now. Some are well into adulthood, while my youngest still have whole chapters ahead of them that I can’t even imagine yet. I want to see those chapters. I want to know the adults my younger children become and watch the older ones continue changing. I want more grandbabies on my lap and then, God willing, the privilege of watching those babies become grown people with lives and opinions and stories of their own.

There is so much I haven’t seen yet.

The same is true of God.

My faith hasn’t become simpler with age. If anything, God has gotten bigger and my certainty about some things has gotten smaller. I’m strangely comfortable with that now. There are mysteries I no longer need to wrestle into explanations and questions I suspect I’ll carry until whatever happens after this life finally answers them.

Curiosity may be one of the things I want most from my next fifty years. I still have a student’s heart. Give me another book. Another rabbit hole. Another idea that rearranges something I thought I understood. Let me discover at seventy that fifty-year-old René was completely full of shit about something. I hope I’m still capable of changing my mind.

I’d love to tell you that every ambition I have now comes from some beautifully healed place and I’ve completely separated desire from ego.

Please.

I’m fifty, not enlightened.

There are still things I want partly because accomplishing them would feel fucking good. I’m sure proving myself still sneaks in occasionally wearing a respectable outfit. Sometimes ambition is purpose. Sometimes it’s curiosity. Sometimes it’s ego. Sometimes I just really want the damn thing.

The difference is that I’m better at noticing who’s doing the wanting.

There were years when more meant proof. If I earned enough, maybe I was valuable. If I accomplished enough, maybe I mattered. If I became impressive enough, successful enough, attractive enough, needed enough, perhaps something inside me would finally unclench.

That kind of hunger is exhausting because it can never actually eat enough.

The hunger I feel now is different.

I can love my home and still want that ranch. Financial security doesn’t prevent me from wanting greater wealth. Adoring my family doesn’t mean every desire I have needs to revolve around them. Loving my body doesn’t require me to stop asking it to become stronger. Being deeply in love with Craig doesn’t mean our relationship has reached some finished state where there’s nothing left to discover.

Thanking God for these fifty years doesn’t prevent me from asking rather enthusiastically for fifty more.

Maybe that’s what has surprised me most about this birthday. After everything life has handed me, I still have such an enormous appetite for it.

I still want the ranch. I want the books and the money and the passport stamps. I want strong legs and long kisses and grandchildren on my lap. I want to learn things that rearrange what I believe. I want to see what my children become and what Craig and I look like with another twenty years written across our faces. I want to know God better, understand myself more honestly and occasionally disappear somewhere beautiful long enough that somebody has to ask when the hell I’m coming home.

Will I get all of that? Probably not.

Fifty years has also taught me that life doesn’t give a shit about my itinerary.

I’m still making one.

I have absolutely no interest in being twenty-five again. I’ve already had twenty-five. I know what she did with it, and frankly, we’ve covered enough of that this week.

What interests me now is finding out what it feels like to become an old woman who remained completely fucking alive.

Maybe that’s what fifty has clarified more than anything.

I don’t want more because this life isn’t enough.

I want more because, God, I love being here.

→Maybe wanting more isn’t always evidence that something is missing. Maybe sometimes it’s evidence that we’ve finally figured out what makes us feel alive.

So I’m curious: What do you still want more of?

Not what you’re supposed to want at your age. Not what would look impressive to anyone else. What do you still want to experience, build, learn, taste, see, love or become?

Tell me one thing. And yes, you’re absolutely allowed to say money, sex, a ranch in Montana or all three.

As always loving and praying for you and our world,

Rene Schooler

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.