Forever Young - Thoughts on Turning Thirty

Today is an auspicious day, I am turning thirty. Thirty years I have walked this planet, and I am still alive (and kicking!). What an achievement! Society tells me I should celebrate with lots of alcohol to forget all the worries and doubts about my slowly decaying body and the direction my life is going, but rather than that, I would like to take some time to sit down and reflect.

Thirty, and feeling younger than ever!

I have the impression many people around me dread the day they turn thirty, as if somehow now they are ‘old’ and there life will be over. There seems to be an aversion towards ageing in our society that keeps proclaiming in movies and advertisements the possibility of an eternal youth if we just use the right hair lotion and buy the right fancy car. For me however, it is nothing like this. I have actually been looking forward to the day I am leaving my twenties and the illusion of this so called ‘eternal youth’. I feel I am ready for it, bring it on, being a thirty-something!

Why do so many people seem to dread this day? What is this fear of growing old? I love growing old, and I intend to grow much older. Here is my theory. It is just a theory, so please feel free to share your thought on the matter with me as well. I think if one clings on to the past, and does not want to move into the future, it might mean that somehow one’s life has stalled and become stuck in routine. If our lives are no longer exciting, and we are no longer waking up in the morning full of energy and expectation, it might mean that we have stopped to explore, to grow and to develop ourselves.

And that just seems the case for many people. Not a day goes by that I open my Facebook feed and I do not see someone who just got married or bought a house, or – even better – who reminisces about times gone by (Thank you Facebook memories!). Not that these are necessarily bad things, on the contrary, these things can be quite exciting, even though I personally choose to live a quite different lifestyle. We should however not get stuck in routine, and memories of the past. Me, I do not look back too much, I do not have time and energy to wast on that. I am moving forward, full speed ahead. Every day I am exploring new things, meeting new people and challenging myself.

Get this car and remain young and attractive forever!

Our society seems to have forgotten the benefits of the wisdom that comes with age. I would honestly not want to go back to being twenty. I know myself much better now, I know what I really want in life, what makes me happy. I am much more engaged with things I find really meaningful and better able to engage with others in a meaningful way. I know how to take care of myself and my body and live healthier than ever. I know my strengths and weaknesses and I know how to work on them. It is true, I have had some difficult moments here and there, life is not as rosy as it seemed ten years ago, but I have also learned how to deal with difficulties. I know more difficult moments will come, yet I am confident I can deal with them. If turning thirty is a token of all that, I will wear my age with pride. In short, I feel worthy of thirty.

It seems to me that in our culture, this so called ‘eternal youth’ – take a Red Bull, skydive, run the marathon! – is kind of a superficial youth, a youth that is more about the external: how you look, the things you own, the adventurous things you do (and if possible, how much money you can spend in the process). Pablo Picasso once said: ‘It takes a long time to become young,’ and I think I finally understand what he said. The real youth is not about how young you look, or how much you go to the gym, it is about keeping an open mind, about not being caught up in fear and inhibition, but remaining open to experience. In that sense, I feel younger now than I ever was, and I look forward to growing younger still in the future. In the words of another great artist, Bob Dylan: ‘I was so much older then, I am younger than that now.’

Here in Auroville, where I live, explore and discover myself, we talk about a ‘youth that never ages’, so yes, every day, I do not go to the gym, yet I am working very hard on myself, and hope to become forever young!