My birthday in Toronto, September 2006 was woeful.
My birthday in Taichung, September 2007 was non-existent.
My birthday in Taipei, September 2008 will be my 30th.
This year I've decided to do a series aptly titled 'On Approaching 30'. It is a special number. Whether we pay attention to it or not, that big hyphenated 3-0 evades our life cycle and clearly stakes a claim as a noted marker of one's life.
The idea of turning 30, turns some people off. Stereotypically, women fear it as the slippery slide to old age and lost attraction to the opposite sex. The end of one's golden youth and beauty is a frightening thought indeed. But deeper than that, isn't it also a loss of one's confidence and perhaps also a look back a youthful life misspent with nothing but drunken memories and hardly forgotten regrets? It is a miserable time indeed.
But surely there's another way of looking at this. I've been aware of this phenomenon, this natural tendency dread the inevitable passing of time that this attitude just simply won't do for me. Father Time keeps on marching and we shall march in step with him! So instead of bemoaning the big 3-0, welcome it. Why worry about turning 30 when there's 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 to think about. And more if you're lucky. Are you going to get more depressed with each decade or look forward to each anniversary as a chance for a big fabulous party?
In the grand, grand scale of human years turning 30 is just a drop in the ocean these days. Turning 30 should be a happy celebration of having gained some wisdom from those stupid 20s years, possibly jumping from one job to another not knowing how to establish a career, perhaps having serious relationships that only faultered in end because your two lives only soared in two different directions.
After fooling around in your 20s, you come to know what you want in your 30s. And you know what you need to do to get it. You breathe a sigh of relief that you've had the benefit of hindsight and now can figure out the better if not best solution for your problems.
I say all of this because I am approaching 30. I am single, I have no assets, I am starting out again on my career path. Now can you see why I have to be so damn positive?
Have the Day That You Deserve
8 months ago
2 comments:
hey, 30's the new 20, as Jay-Z would say.
That's a very depressing entry. Not sure about the part on receding beauty though. You are still, and I guess always will be, very very pretty.
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