Do you feel your actual age?
A few days ago, I was walking somewhere and noticed myself doing “the shuffle.” You know the one: where your entire weight seems to shift between legs the whole way because something is creaking and painful somewhere. My sister, who came from Indiana like the rest of us, likes to refer to it as a “hitch in your get-along,” which is somehow the most Kansas any of us has ever sounded. When I finally paused, I thought about how I’m going to be forty-one (!!!) in March.
41!
I’m still reeling from having entered my forties in the first place. I don’t think I’ve ever been someone who has cared much about a person’s age, except for myself. I distinctly remember being a kid and thinking that 25 seemed “old” and that I’d never make it there. (To be fair, I was kind of a LOT as a child.) And hey, look at us now! But do you want to know the really weird bit? While sometimes I physically feel my age, like when I got that hitch in my get-along or my incredibly painful feet back during my brief stint in retail, I don’t feel my age at all mentally or emotionally. I’m still me inside — the same kid or teen or twentysomething or even thirtysomething that loves computers, video games, TV shows, and good music. I love storytelling and a sense of community and fun. And the idea of owning a home or getting married and having kids is still completely foreign, while people that I graduated from high school with are starting to become grandparents!
An older friend of mine once told me that it’ll always be this way, too. You’re always the same on the inside; it’s just that your body grows old, weak, and tired without your consent, and it sucks. Because as we age, we also learn more about people and the world around us. Imagine me at 16, armed with the knowledge, experience, and insatiable craving for the things that spark joy that I have now? I feel like I would’ve been unstoppable! Most awkward kid ever? For sure… But it would have been incredible.
Sometimes it makes me sad to think about all the things I didn’t do when I was younger. Finishing college, pursuing things that I loved for a career, etc., because hey… I might have been somewhere and settled by now! But I’m also not upset about who I’ve become by taking the path less traveled. I’ve concluded in the last few years that maybe I’m not meant to have kids or a spouse of my own. I’ve got my dad, my siblings, and my kitties, which, quite frankly, I should be able to claim as dependents with how expensive it is to care for them. I’m learning and pursuing what I love now, and while it’s taking an excruciatingly long time for me to get it, I also have a better sense of seriousness and determination about it. The 23-year-old version of myself, who had spent his birthday in Las Vegas drinking and throwing money away, would not have even thought twice about coding and web development. Now I literally cannot even imagine having fun on a birthday trip to Vegas. And I’m pretty okay about it!
There’s this thought that I’ve always had, which is that you wouldn’t be who you are today if you had made different decisions in the past. And we maybe shouldn’t have many regrets in life because of it. I don’t ordinarily subscribe to the idea that “everything happens for a reason,” but in this case, maybe it’s true. Maybe the past made us all who we are for reasons we just don’t understand until the future becomes the present. And until we can jump in a DeLorean and hit the rewind button, we’re going to have to live with it. (How’s that for “elder Millennial” pop culture references?? 😉)
Sound good?
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