Start with a memory of your early childhood. You remember that time your mother brought over one of her friends and you couldn’t help but think just how old she looked compared to your brothers? She looked ancient around your never-aging-mother.
When you tentatively asked, “How old are you?”
Mother scoffs. She laughs. “I am 30,” she says.
The world stand stills as you hear those words, “I am 30.” That is the face of what someone 20 years older than you looks like? So wise and full of wisdom and knowing. That is the face of the old. A brief recollection of your grand parents comes to mind and you think, “and they are as old as God.”
All throughout our childhood and then onto our teen youth, we see the face of 30 as someone so much older than ourselves. We naively tell ourself that, “we’ll never be that old!” and “I’m never aging!”
And yet the years tick tock away. We hit 20. Then 22. Then 25. That evil age of 30 is drawing nearer and nearer.
26 comes around and the year of being old approaches in 4.
Then 3.
2….
and now 1…
And time has flown by as its a month away now. In one month you are going to be 30. The days count down like seconds to a stop watch. Your heart beats wildly. Your breathing comes in short and you feel light headed. Where had all the time gone?
30 is just a short time away. And here is my approach on it.
30 is the new 20. I know you have all heard this many times throughout the years of staying 21, but please hear me out. It’ll be kept shortish and I hope you leave feeling a little better about the upcoming doom of your age.
In our 20s we are barely recovering from; being thrown out of the house, to graduating or getting our GED or perhaps working. We hit 21 and we struggle. Not everyone struggles and for those, I’ll leave out that part, but many of us in our early to mid 20s have to struggle. It is life. We barely know what we are doing. We think back to high school and glare at the memory: They barely taught us anything. They didn’t teach us to survive this cruel world. Neither did our parents. And then you raise your hand and shake it at God. Why didn’t anyone warn me that life was so difficult?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They did. Our parents did. Our best friend’s parents did. Our teachers. Everyone did. We were just so caught up in our youth that we don’t remember. Or we do remember and we think back at how stupid we were. All the stupid things we were caught up in doing.
Now to those who think the last part, please don’t. We were all young. We all had the power of youth in us (thanks Guy Sensei(Naruto)). We were busy being young. And in your 20s, it’s just another learning phase of our lives. Most people struggle. They live behind memes and only display their happy, memorable moments on social media. It’s never a pretty feeling to display struggle. And yet, for the most part, we all struggle in our 20s.
30 is approaching fast like a hot potato, what do you do?
Don’t panic.
It’s not the end of your world.
It’s the beginning of a great decade and many more to come.
Looking back over the past decade of your life you know that you have matured. You cringe at the ideas/thoughts/actions of the 19 year old you. You have a changed a lot. You have become an adult in truth.
No longer are you that naive little boy/girl who needs to have someone hold their hand to fill out job applications. No longer do you need someone to get you up on time for work or school. You don’t need a supervisor to hover over you as you work. You are a responsible adult now.
In your early 20s you struggled with partying, drinking, time managing school and work and play. Or if you were(are!) a book nerd like myself, you struggled with living in dreams while work and school zoomed all around you. You struggled with putting down books and video games to get on with life.(Ofcourse there are those except from this and this article isn’t about those gifted individuals.)
30 is not the age where you stop all fun and just “adult”. 30 is you heading onto the next phase of your life, knowing so much about yourself than you did 10 years ago. You know (hopefully) how to manage your drink, your work life, your home life (doing laundry on your own and washing dishes without your mom telling you to, etc). And if you don’t know many things, you know that you won’t make stupid mistakes that you did in your youth. You know the world isn’t about to end (crossing my fingers there) and that life goes on and you can better yourself.
So step into your 30 year old body. What amazing goals do you have planned for the start of the best days of your life? It’s only going to be better now that you are 30.
Spirit of The Ancients 