Hello Thirty!

Now that I am no longer in my twenties, I feel somewhat allowed to reflect on my twenties as if it happened like twenty years ago. I know, I have this incredibly terrible sense of time whereby I regard anyone who is younger than me by a year as someone who's so young and someone who's a year older as, oh well, old. But don't get offended ok, I love old people, they have this tendency to be better than their younger counterparts. There is so much wisdom and so much stories that I love to hear, if they are willing to share.

Right. Back to my reflections about my twenties. A lot of people say that your twenties are your time for experiment: you find out what sort of career you want to do, for starters, or if you want to work at all (some of us can afford not to). You find out what sort of friends you'd like to hang out with, what sort of lifestyle you want to maintain, the kind of clothes you want to wear and bla bla bla. When you are in your twenties and you make a mistake or two or more, people are generally forgiving because of the fact that, oh well, you are young. Because of this, by the time you leave this decade, you would've gained the skills to forgive yourself, and hopefully understand the importance of experimenting and embracing new things in order to stay curious and maintain an open mind (or the way I put it, stay relevant).

If I were to point out the most important realisation that I had when I was in my twenties is this: we are here (in this life) only for a short period of time. Everything is temporary, so we make the most of this thing called the present. Because no two moments is exactly the same; you can sit down with the same friends at the same restaurant eating the same food and the moment would be different because well, people change, things change and life goes on.

I am pretty sure I am not the only person who is freaked out of the fact that my time in this planet is limited. But I think, a lot of people forget that their time is limited and because it's easy to think that we are invincible or something along the lines, we live our lives as if we are going to live forever - which is great, except when we are faced with this thing called mortality, or the end of it. And then it's panic at full force, and you're like, yeah, what? It's like my fiftieth birthday and I am all alone?

To be fair, not everyone thinks about mortality and not everyone is confronted with the question of their own mortality. I mean, why else do people have religion if not to insure themselves against the risk of the life after life or that they want a distraction in the form of worrying about the life after life so that they can forget they can live in this life, if they want to. (KIDDING! Gah. There are plenty of other reasons as to why people practise religions.) Anyway, so we live this life as if we are invincible and that nothing can touch us. We focus on the things we think are important, and they are important alright, they are, unless they cease to become important and we find ourselves back to square one, with no one else being there with us because presumably everyone has moved on and we want to move on too, except that we don't know how. Or that we forget how since it has been quite a while since we were in square one. And let's face it, falling down hurts. Getting up is hard. Moving on is a pain and letting go, well, that's bloody fucking difficult.

If you are in your thirties and you still haven't figured out the things that are important to you and how to manage these things (and your desires), then you better start figuring out the things that are important to you, not just in the short run, but also in the long run, so that at least, in the extremely small chance that you really are invincible and you do live forever, then at least you've got this bit sorted out. Just sayin'.

ps. Of course I love you. Happy birthday, you old man.