Twentysomething No More

One of my all-time favorite albums is that one by Jamie Cullum, entitled "Twentysomething." As I celebrated my birthday yesterday, the album came to my mind as I realized I officially am no longer a part of that twentysomething population. I still am surprised when children born in the 1990s, the little kids of my youth, are wheeled in to the ER as adult patients. When did they grow up to be adults? More importantly, when did I grow up?

As a little boy, I looked up to my kuyas and ates, twentysomethings and thirtysomethings, and I thought of them as Adults, spelled with a capital A, mature, self-sufficient, grown-up. It may be that I just wasn't privy to their personal struggles and issues but as I look at myself and my generation, I may have had, as a child, a too idealistic picture of being a grown-up. I don't feel like the grown-up I built up in my mind. I am immature, a hothead prone to temper tantrums, impatient, at times irrational. And as I look around me, every other adult I know is the same way, just in varying quantities of childishness.

I find it a little bit funny and a little bit depressing to ruminate on the fact that I am no longer a twentysomething. I haven't been able to fully wrap my head around living life as a thirty year old man. I don't know if I'm going through some form of delayed quarter life crisis but I've never had a birthday before when my age bothered me as much as this birthday. Thirty. Three zero. Such a round number. I don't feel like I'm thirty.

My preoccupation with my age-change should not be taken as a lack of zest or as fearfulness of the future. I face tomorrow headstrong, with my pack of dreams, filled to the brim, slung over my shoulder. I aim to leave my mark on this earth, and I mean to do it as excellently as I could and by the grace and blessing of the Lord.

It is a strange thing to be, thirty. But it's not so bad. Goodbye Twentysomething. It's been a great decade. But I'm positive the next one will be even better.

Sent from a BB.