Birthdays Were The Worst Days

We’re all aging. Every passing day, nay, minute, is put behind us as we move forward. We’re all getting older with the passage of time. But are we growing old, too?

A guy I know, we’ll call him Jerry, just had a birthday. He’s now twenty-eight years old. I talked to him about it. He doesn’t feel older, but he knows that he is. He says the occasion is becoming bittersweet. He appreciates all the well-wishing; it’s nice to know that friends and family care. Still, his birthday seems to serve more as a reminder that he’s aging. It reminds him that his youth is ephemeral. It reminds him that, yes, he’s getting older but, no, he’s not really growing old.

Growth is a process of natural development. To grow is to become, not just old but wise. Advanced, experienced. More adult. More assured of your place as a person, your role as a gear in the machine of society.

Jerry’s in an interesting phase of that growth: a second coming-of-age period. Whereas the adolescent years forced him into young-adulthood, the late-twenties are now pushing him toward actual adulthood, toward the inescapable period in which he’ll be expected to ‘act his age.’

The adage ‘age is just a number’ is reassuring, he says, because after all, age really is nothing more than a number. Though society seems to thrust age-specific expectations on all of us, it doesn’t mean we’re necessarily required to meet them. If anything, they’re only suggested mileposts – points along the way of everybody’s path of life. At sixteen, you get a driver’s license. At eighteen, you graduate high school and reach voting age. At twenty-two-ish, you get a college degree. After that, you’re turned loose to stake your claim in the world. One’s success in life (which many link with work) is then often measured commensurate with their age. At thirty, you’re set in your career, in position to climb the ladder. At forty, you make partner or VP or whatever. At fifty, you’re running the joint.

Of course, this isn’t always the case, and of course, it doesn’t have to be. While Jerry’s fine with the hand he’s been dealt, he sometimes wonders if he’s failed at meeting society’s expectations for a fellow his age. He says he sees other 28-year-olds leading different lives than his. They’ve grown up, grown into their age and found or made their place in society. Some are more successful, some are happier, some are the person they wanted to be. Others are not.

Jerry pauses to think about what he’s said. I think about it, too – often, in fact. And when I really (REALLY) think about it, a man shouldn’t be measured, by himself or anyone else, by what he’s achieved in a specified amount of his years. He shouldn’t be considered a failure, by himself or anyone else, if he doesn’t have what others have, if he chooses a different path than the one society prescribes. A man should just do his best and be content with that, societal expectations be damned. When you boil it down, as Jerry and I did, we’re all getting older, growing old, and walking down the same obligatory path of life. Personally, I'll heed the words of Neil Young and “walk on, walk on.”