So the other day I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen in over a year. We had limited time as I needed to catch a flight. We caught up over a quick meal, and given the limited amount of time, we conversed about a lot of things. I mention to him how lately I’ve been thinking about turning 40 a whole lot. I am 38 years old (39 in a few days) and although I still have at least a year to go before I turn 40, I have already begun seeing myself as a 40 year old. This friend of mine, is 35 years old. So when I mentioned how 40 is looming on the horizon and how extremely conscious I am of that fact, he said, “You know, I didn’t see 35 coming. Even now when people ask me how old I am, I often almost say that I am 34. I think I am stuck on 34.”
That to me was the funniest thing I had heard in a long time. “I didn’t see 35 coming.” As if 35 is some sort of freak accident that you can never prepare for. As if it’s an impromptu speech required of you at a funeral, as if you never; on the day you turned 34 that on your next birthday, you would be turning 35 years old. The way my friend treated turning 35 was as if 35 is some ominous thing to be avoided, as if 35 is a big deal. Yes, a big deal.
I guess for me, 35 was a big deal 3 years ago because in a way, it marked the half way mark (excuse the pun). The Bible tells us that man’s days on earth are 70 years, and anything outside of that is an extension of God’s grace (Psalm 90:9-10). So 35 for me marked the point where growth ceased and aging began. It’s the point where one starts anticipating the pains that come with age. For others, it heralds the much dreaded mid-life crisis. Age 35 is also officially the end of youth in South Africa.
So I looked at my friend, having known each other for at least 16 years, me, in my early twenties and him, barely our of his teens; in the prime of our youth. Today, his hairline has significantly receded; to put it mildly. He keeps no hair at all. Me, with streaks of grey hair that didn’t exist when we first met. Each of us has accumulated a fair share of the unwelcome visceral fat around the tummy region, and the tolls of adult life can be seen in the lack of enthusiasm for life that we both possessed in our twenties. We both feel that our parents’ generation had this “life” thing better figured out than our generation.
On this day that we met, so much had changed since the very first day we met back in 2002. We have been through many different chapters of our life stories. Some glorious, some excruciating, some hilarious, others traumatic, some totally unnecessary and others just simply annoying and others more perplexing. Life is the sum of all those experiences. The gains, the countless losses. The loves and the hurts. The Tears, the joys. The celebrations, the Lessons. Life is still beautiful. We can never have it all figured out, but we can make the most of the opportunities that come our way. We can make good choices and hopefully when 70 dawns, if we do make it that far, we would look back and be content that we would have made every minute count.
Are you dreading 35? Why?
Are you already past 35? what have your experiences been? Have you accomplished all that you set out to acheive in your 20s?
Are you enthusiastic and excited about life?
five to forty 