Another Year Older, Another Year Older....

When you are eight, you count down the days to them. When you are twenty, you can’t wait till them. When you are thirty-nine, you celebrate the same one three or four times. That’s right, I am talking about birthdays. The day that everyone gathers around to celebrate the moment you came out of your mother and remind you how many years ago that was.

            Last year, for obvious reasons, I was ecstatic for my birthday to come along. Mostly because most of my friends had already hit the big 21 and I was still annoyingly 20. As of recently though, birthdays aren’t as fun as they used to be. It seems, as we get older, birthdays just become reminders of one step closer to death.

            If you haven’t caught on, I feel old at the age of 22. But why should I? With my genes, that probably isn’t even a quarter of my lifetime. It is not like I have a shorten life in front of me. I am just starting; after all, college just ended three weeks ago.

            I can trace the insecurities about age though. Society sets standards for certain ages. At ten, we should get more responsibilities. At thirteen, we should be in the middle of puberty. At sixteen, we need to have a license. At eighteen, we are adults. At twenty one, we should start drinking. By forty, we should be married with children. By sixty five, we should retire. Every age is planned for us, deciphered for us about what stage of life we should be in.

            But I say we should take on the stages we are prepared for, even if this deems us as immature or too mature. If everyone is unique, then every age is unique. No one can tell you that you are old. Only you can deem that yourself. You can be a young 85 or an old 25. It all depends on you.