Live a Life You Don't Need Rescuing From
40 Practical Tips and Bits of Lady Wisdom Upon Turning 40 (Part I)
A month ago, some friends and I gathered at a BYOB karaoke joint in Koreatown and celebrated my 40th birthday the same way I celebrated turning 30, 21, and 18: singing our hearts out to the songs of our youth. What can I say, like Eric Liddell, I feel God’s pleasure when I belt out “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” It was exactly the right way to ring in the next half (or five-ninths?) of life.
The next week, I joined my family at a cabin in southern Ohio to mark the milestone birthday. We watched E.T. so I could observe my 5-year-old nephew experience it for the first time; we went on hikes, ate brats like Midwestern royalty, and played badminton and bocce ball. My crafty mother made a garland of photos marking each year of my life. It was fun and unflashy and a sweet reminder of how much I not only love my family but also quite like them.
I recently recorded a four-part summer series for the podcast I co-host titled, “Tell Katelyn What to Do with Her Life.” Friends, family, and peers offered me advice in four areas of life (location, dating, money, and parenthood), before I spoke with Elizabeth Oldfield about how we wisely make decisions that lead to holy flourishing. A few friends said it was like listening to a spiritual director, the kind who wears Eileen Fisher kaftans and asks questions that are like a laser-beam into your soul (which is another plug for Elizabeth’s book, Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times).
If you listened to the series, you may have picked up on the fact that I’m facing some big life decisions—ones that were not even on my radar at the beginning of 2024.
The first one is related to where I live. This fall marks six years in New York City, a place that has enriched me in every way a person can be enriched, except, of course, in the way of literal riches. I will always look back on this chapter of my life with deep gratitude, for the everyday beauty here, the friendships formed, and the unparalleled diversity among people here that has widened my understanding of the world and of God’s work in it.
Yet I have always known NYC would be one chapter among many (well, that’s not true; deep in the honeymoon stage, I declared, “I’m dying here! They’ll have to haul my dead body out of my 400-square-foot apartment!” before a pandemic sapped the romance right of that image). And the NYC chapter is closing sooner than I expected, because the second big life decision I’m facing is whether to pursue single motherhood by choice. And while that destination can be reached by many different roads, it’s an easier destination to reach outside NYC, for all sorts of logistical and psychological reasons.
So that’s where I’m headed. I believe all things cohere in God’s ultimate, good purposes for us, but I don’t believe God has one blueprint for our lives that we’re meant to frantically decode. Most of the time, it seems, we tackle life decisions by using multiple tools of discernment — prayer, yes, and also good-old-fashioned reason, advice from trusted people, research, and an undervalued question that’s central to Ignatian spirituality: “What do I actually want?”
People sometimes ask me for advice. A former colleague’s daughter, just starting out in her career, reached out this spring to see if we could talk about where she should relocate to. Our conversation reminded me that, as much as we as adults want to believe we have our ish sorted out, most of us are winging it, trusting that the decisions we make at different turns will turn out okay, or at least not disastrously. Most of us feel ill equipped to give others advice, between we keenly feel our need of it from others.
Even still, I want to share 40 bits of advice and wisdom I’ve gleaned in the first 40 years of life, because who doesn’t love a listicle, and also, I do think life has granted me insight I didn’t have even 5, 10, or 20 years ago. (Gosh, do you remember what it was like being a 20-year-old? The dangerous combination of thinking you know a lot, while having no idea all you don’t know…) The first 20 tips are below, and I’ve broken everything into categories.
Also: This is all just, like, my opinion, man. If some of this doesn’t resonate with you or your experience, I invite you to chew the meat and spit out the bones.
BOOKS
Read omnivorously. Read nonfiction and fiction. Read across genres. If you only ever read literary fiction, relinquish the snobbery and pick up a buzzy fantasy novel. If you only read genre fiction, maybe a political biography is what’s in store. Try different things, because it’s okay to…
Abandon books you can’t get into. This is a big shift for me. Until recently, it was hard to quit a book once I had read past the few pages. It felt like I had already made a commitment and am not a person who flakes. But there’s only so much time to read, and one shouldn’t waste their life convincing themselves that they should like a book even though they just can’t get into it.
In general, like the things you like, not that you should like. This obviously applies to all pop culture. I spent a lot of my 20s convincing myself that Iron and Wine wan’t boring (although no one could be as boring as Jack Johnson, hahaha), and that Orange Is the New Black was groundbreaking and important, and that I needed to watch and like Quentin Tarantino’s movies because CINEMA. Yes, we should stretch ourselves and be open to new things. And also, if it’s not your cup of tea, you can say so and still be a worthy and good and thoughtful person. Pay attention to what you actually enjoy, not what you’re supposed to enjoy.
Read a book once a year that you understand maybe 70 percent of. A former boss said this to me, and it’s stuck with me. There’s a difference between a challenging reading experience and an actively unpleasant reading experience. We should challenge our minds sometimes!
Go with book recommendations from people you trust. There are a handful of people in my life who, if they recommend a book, I’m going to at least give it a shot. I’ve had more success finding books I love relying on these people than on the NYT bestseller list. There are just so many bad books out there.
FOOD AND DRINK
Learn to cook at home. The second-wave feminists sought to free themselves from domestic duties, and I’m grateful women today aren’t expected to be perfect homemakers, especially when they may be more naturally suited to the classroom or the boardroom. Yet it’s hard not to feel that an art form — the ability to whip up a simple, delicious meal from healthy-ish ingredients — has been lost.
Home cooking is on the decline, I imagine, because finding recipes, getting ingredients, and setting aside the time to cook feels daunting to overstressed families today. I eat out a couple times a week, but I also feel more human when I make something with my hands to eat.
The New York Times Cooking subscription is the most valuable subscription I’ve paid for. It’s $40 a year, and the recipes never miss.
Wash your produce. I don’t know, my brother has a green thumb and insists on this.
A good cheap meal is better than a pretty-good fancy meal. There’s a cash-only Chinese takeout restaurant around the corner from my apartment with bad overhead lighting. Nothing on the menu is more than $20. I’d rather have their egg drop soup and chicken and broccoli over brown rice any day than a pretty good meal in a place with cool overhead lighting and a strong Instagram game. The Midwestern frugality is strong with this one. That said…
A perfectly chilled gin martini will cure what ails you. I don’t drink much at home anymore and gave up my liquor collection and bar cart years ago. So when I do go out with friends, I’m willing to spend $20 on a gin martini made by a professional in a beautiful bar.
BEAUTY
Wear clothing that looks good on your body. I know this seems basic, but the churn of fast fashion has many of us anxious to adopt the latest trends without considering whether the trend looks good on the bodies we have, and not merely that of a 21-year-old 6-foot-tall model. For example:
There are so many ways to look beautiful and fashionable while also investing in pieces of clothing that accentuate our best features.
Invest in fewer high-quality things than more cheap things. This is also related to resisting the scourge of fast fashion, which encourages us to buy more cheap pieces of clothing, then replace them with more cheap, trendy clothing once it’s out of style. Instead, if you have the resources, it’s better for the earth — and for our wallets long term — to purchase fewer higher-quality pieces of clothing that will be in style for a long time. (Listen, I have pieces of clothing from Zara and Madewell that weren’t produced in ethical ways, so this is aspirational.)
Be the squeaky wheel. Several years ago I bought a Fossil purse for $200, and the strap broke within a few months. I was at a Fossil outlet store in the Chicago area and explained what happened to the clerk. She said, “Go ahead and pick out a new bag here, and we’ll replace it for free.”
Last year I bought a pair of beautiful black leather clogs from Nisolo, but I kept falling in them. Like, wiping out on the sidewalks of Brooklyn. After the third wipeout, when I fell and put a hole in my linen jumpsuit, I was done. I contacted Nisolo customer service, and they refunded me the full price I had paid and also let me keep the clogs, which I sold on Facebook marketplace for $20.
Don’t be a Karen, of course. But if you’ve paid decent money for something and it breaks or is unworkable, you can politely explain the problem and often get your money back. It’s worth being a (nice but firm) squeaky wheel.
Moisturize your neck and decolletage. I don’t know, you guys, I feel like I just got down my full face care routine and somehow neglected my neck and upper chest. When I got back from a two-week hiking trip out West this spring, I noticed my chest crease looked like that of a retiree in Arizona who never drinks water.
If you find a great hair stylist, never let them go. Like most of you, I’m sure, I’ve had the full range of hair stylist experiences. The most disappointing experiences have been with stylists who seem to think you are there to be their friend, not to pay for a professional haircut. They jabber on and ask personal questions (no lie, I had one ask if the person I was newly dating was well endowed), yet somehow miss the crucial information you’ve provided about what you want done to your hair. The hair stylist I have now is friendly and professional. We have nice intermittent conversation while she is focused on providing the service I’m paying her for. She #blesses me.
DATING AND RELATIONSHIPS
Pay attention to how your body feels when you’re with someone. I don’t mean physical attraction (although that’s important), I mean: When I’m with this person, does my nervous system feel safe? Do I feel relaxed and like I can be myself? Of course, the early stages of dating carry an inherent unknown, which is what brings the butterflies, the anxiety of “will they text? will I see them again?” That’s part of the excitement of early dating. But you don’t want to live in the butterflies stage forever. You want to live in the stage where your body knows in some precognitive way that this person is safe for you.
In a male-female dating scenario, early on, let him pay. I’ve changed my mind on this because the hard-and-fast rule that “the man must always pay” always felt a bit too rigid for the context of an actual relationship.
But listen, you both know that it’s not because you can’t pay and are a weak lady leaning on men to get through the world. It’s precisely because so many women of my generation are uber-competent and will often do all the work to conceive and plan a date, that all the guy has to do is show up and be not-smelly and somewhat coherent. Allowing the guy to pay for the date early on, before you’ve established some trust or commitment, is a tangible way he communicates that you are worth his time and attention, symbolized in the financial investment. After that stage, I don’t care who pays (and have usually just alternated picking up the tab with whoever I was in a relationship with).
Men’s shoes say a lot. I’m a snob, but it’s central to my worldview that the following are crimes against humanity.
The spiritualized fairytale is overplayed. We know pop culture plays up the fairytale romance, and many Christian communities have their own version of it. A former acquaintance used to say that the first time her now-husband saw her, the Holy Spirit spoke to him, saying she was his wife (even though I had on good background that he had initial doubts — as is common when you’re getting to know someone!). It seemed important to her that the story of their relationship start with divine revelation.
Christians sometimes inherit a belief that in order for a relationship to be blessed, it must begin with a message in the sky, when it might have started with the whims of an algorithm. And God is no less present in the latter than the former. I also know plenty of married couples who struggled to discern whether they should get married, who faced conflict and pain while dating, who broke up and got back together. Their stories of marital love are no less part of Providence than the stories of messages written in the sky.
Live a life you don’t need rescuing from. A friend who was dating someone once said that her single life was a can of beans, while her life with the guy she was dating was better, because at least it wasn’t a can of beans.
Whether we are single, dating, or married, we have the chance to create a beautiful, rich life that we’d never even think to compare to a wartime food staple.
Of course many people say they are happier once they are in a healthy, committed relationship, if that’s something they want. But it’s a risky proposition to stake your happiness on a hypothetical person, and I think women, and Christian women in particular, have been denied the tools to imagine and craft a life not centered on marriage and family as the pinnacle of fulfillment.
What if we lead lives that aren’t like a can of beans but rather like a beautiful and nourishing three-course meal, shared around a dinner table with friends and family? And if a romantic partner arrives, they are an amazing enhancement to an already full, meaningful life rather than the sole ticket to one?
No one is coming to rescue you from the life you have. If you don’t cherish your life for what it is now, you won’t be able to cherish it even if you do get the thing you want. And couples who have been together more than, like, a year will say that the relationship brings new challenges and aches even while it dissipates others. I want to live a life I don’t need rescuing from.
Thank you for reading! Part II will go up next week… —KB
“I think women, and Christian women in particular, have been denied the tools to imagine and craft a life not centered on marriage and family as the pinnacle of fulfillment.”
Well said. “Denied” is doing a lot of great work in this sentence - as you articulate in the linked post.
I like it all a lot but especially like the single motherhood sentence :)