Last week, I turned thirty. I hadn't really given it too much thought until I saw it stated on MySpace that I was, in fact, now thirty years old. Not that I had some sort of stunning, jaw-dropping, "holy-crap-I'm-no-longer-twenty-something" moment, but it did sort of bring it home. In the weeks and days leading up to my 30th birthday, I was not filled with feelings of dread. I did not have a sinking feeling. I did not feel as though I was crossing some sort of invisible barrier into officially "being old". Why? I've decided that there are three reasons for this:
1. I'm older than most of the people that I hang out with, so I've been being called "the old guy" for years now...why should it worry me now?
2. When you think about it, what's thirty anyway? The average life expectancy in these United States now is 77 years, 5 months. I'm therefore well short of being even halfway through my life (if, God willing, I turn out to have an average life span.) That being the case, I can hardly call myself old; even if my peers revel in doing so.
3. Things in my life are pretty stable right now. I have been married for almost eight years now. We just welcomed our second child into the world. We have a roof over our heads. I have a great, stable job. From talking to friends of mine, a lot of the consternation about hitting age milestones comes from these things not being fulfilled. As one of them put it: "When you turn thirty when you're single, you start to worry about never finding someone. No one wants to be seen as "that old guy" by the young twenty-something's at a club."
So, I figure that I'm a pretty lucky guy. Sure, I'm no longer a "twenty-something", but who cares? Like George Burns said: "You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old."
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