Today I turn 30 !!!
Well...the dreaded 30 as I had always imagined it. As a kid, 30 year olds seemed like uncles and aunts to me. I somehow couldn’t really imagine myself in their shoes. Even the Fairytale Princesses and Princes never turned 30! They only ‘lived happily ever after’.
Never thought one day I’ll also turn 30.
And when I turned 20, I did realise that sooner or later (well, a decade later to be precise) I’d turn 30. But then 10 years was a long time to go and so why bother was my instant stand, every time this uneasy thought cropped into my mind.
And now that I’ve actually turned 30, I am compelled to ask myself over and over again about how I really feel about it.
The only thing that I can remember right now is a particular scene from the movie ‘Before Sunrise’, in which the character played by Ethan Hawke recites the verses from a poem ‘As I Walked Out One Evening’ by W.H.Auden. As he says those verses in the backdrop of a European Town Square with his beloved by his side, I was mesmerised...
“The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.”
And today when I am already there, I don’t really feel sad...no dread...not even an iota of fear...Because I know that life is designed to be like that. I do remember my parents in their thirties and now that I am thirty, I only feel that it is as natural and normal as it can be.
May be it’s all these past years which have given me the maturity to understand this, or maybe I am still in a self-denial mode. Well well, no....I choose to believe the former. Turning thirty wasn’t difficult and definitely my life did not end at the strike of the midnight clock, as I would have imagined it to be when I was younger. On the other hand, Shalini and I are really looking forward for the days to come, when our lives will change....change for the better.
As each day passes by, I realise the importance of ‘living’ and not just ‘existing’. Each day gives way to a new day ....and in the end as Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865) had once said; it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
