Reflections: Turning 30

"I turned 30 two weeks ago. I'm just kind of neutral about it right now, and maybe still a bit stunned. It's a little hard to believe that I'm not in my 20s anymore; it's a whole new decade!" This has been written by someone who was probably getting nervous about entering into his thirties!

Now that the man has lived through the 20s decade and had many eye-opening experiences - jobs that brought lots of surprises, relationships that were difficult to foster and maintain, and neighbors that were a source of friction - he has become less idealistic about the world than he once was. But he does feel the pivot happening. He does feel childhood and adolescence and young adulthood receding. There it goes. Like a wave in high tide that washes in, that slaps the sand with its crunch and its sleekness, spreading out among the particles, picking up stray bits of crab and shell, of sea weed and kelp and other marine vegetation, brooming across the beach, and then, hanging there, suspending for a second, it begins to pull away. To go back into the rolling blue ether of time. To join all the other childhoods and adolescences. To smash them together, rubbing their mass together, all the laughter and pain and joy and horror, the tragedy and the elation spuming together in a spray of foam and air and total complete effervescence.

Until that mass lifts and disintegrates into time and space and place.

B-i-g 30.

That man with his wounded scars, meandering ways with dreamy big eyes peeping through the
glasses. That BOY who suddenly turned 30. He wipes his glasses and sighs...memories of long lost
past came down in a flash of a second.

He wanted that last one kiss from his young blood love, that last puff of the adolescent cigarette, the
shy glance of that un-named girl in the park. He inhaled deep and tried to sense the air that he smelt
when he was 20 - a decade ago when he was a bit of a rebel, he used to wear love stained glasses
then. He tried to go through and mend all the pages that he once unread, all the works that he kept undone, all the promises that he never kept. All at once, one by o-n-e.

"You know that feeling you get when you gaze into the campfire? When you can hear what’s being said, but still you let your eyes get lost in the dancing, formless flames. You think of earlier, when everyone worked together, how the flames roared up. You couldn’t have gotten there without them, but now it’s just you, alone in you head, watching the fire flicker, and subside, slowly…", he whispers.

He stares into the blaze of thirty birthday candles on the cake. Inhaling deeply, and blow until his lungs are empty. The room goes dark, and all he can see are the glowing orange wicks.

The room got filled with laughter and happiness. He wiped that invisible tear from his eyes...while Guns N' Roses sang..

"And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Little boy blue and the man 'n the moon... "

The years of our lives are like the leaves on a tree - we should not mourn for the few that have fallen when we could celebrate the many healthy ones that still remain. Thirty is much too young to mourn the loss of youth and the shortness of life. I am healthy, happy and would rather spend my time living my life than futilely mourning its mortality. Mortality is something that we cannot change, but what we can change is what we do with our time. Pack enough into your days and you will feel no need to regret the years behind you - rather you will treasure them.