Age Is Just A Number. Is It?

Age is just a number. Is it? 

There's a huge difference between being 17 and 77. Or people wouldn't say - Toni Morrison won the Nobel prize at 62! - with that wonder in their voice. 62 is a number that matters. It's not just any number. Morrison had been slumming it as a writer for 28 years by the time she won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993. 28 is a long time to wait for a lifetime achievement award too! 

You don't have the same problems at 17 as you have at 77. You have problems but very different ones. It's mostly falling in love for the first time. And getting your heart broken. Feeling like that is the end of the world and realising by 17 and a half that it's not. 17 is the beginning of one's life with numerous prospects before a person. Plenty of time to fall in and out of love. Lots of decisions to make and change. Enormous possibilities to get into and quit careers. 

77 is more like having left a lifetime behind. Having fallen in and out of love. Made all the decisions that there are - except and where and how you'd like to die. Living with the consequences of those decisions. Knowing that the road ahead is a short one. Living with borrowed time you are given and whatever your health permits. When someone climbs the Everest at 77, that's news. Because 77 is not just a number. It means something.

There's always so much that happens between 17 and 77 and every number has a significance. They are not just numbers but a year in the life of a person. When good or bad things happen. We discover or lose love. We decide to hold on or let go. 

There was a time when there was a right age to do things. Get your education sorted by 20, get married and have kids by 30 and then spend the next 2 decades raising them. By the time retirement comes knocking, you are done with your worldly duties. You get to enjoy the sunset years as you deem fit - hopefully with the nest egg you have set aside especially for this purpose. That's a very simple way of putting the traditional expectations of how life should be lived. 

Before you call me an ageist, let me clarify that it's never too early or late to do anything but the age at which people do something has a meaning to it. That's all I am saying. No one is happier than me about the fact that these numbers have become pretty flexible now. 

No one gets married by 25 now. Or 28. Or 30. Even women. I like that they have the freedom to choose a partner and tie the knot when they are ready or have found the right one. Kids are optional. Or can be had at anytime during the 30 and 40 window. The reproductive system is the most ready between 20 and 30 but socially and professionally, that's no longer feasible. They then scramble to freeze their eggs but that's a different story for another day. Although that's also why age isn't just a number. Whether you are 28 or 38 makes a big difference to your body and the baby you carry. And what your age will be on the next 2 decades when you will raise it. 

I love that people can have multiple careers in a lifetime. You can start off as an entrepreneur right out of college or 2 decades into your working life. But if you choose to go independent at 45, it means something compared to when you choose to be an entrepreneur at 25. While at the latter age, you have capital and experience, the risk is higher too, the liabilities are greater too. There is less room for failure. More is at stake than at 25. So 45 is not just a number. It means something to a new entrepreneur. 

Despite how we've changed the personal and social contexts of the years we live, somethings definitely make an appearance around the same time as always. While the 20's are the time you enjoy finding who you are and settle into it by the 30s, mid life crisis in some form comes a-calling in your 40s. The highs of life are done. All the heart breaks are behind you. The major choices you made about your life will stick for the rest of your life. 

And that's when the list of death defying feats begin to frame in your mind in a bid to become more life affirming. The 2 decades that we spent giving our life a shape have given it the shape we wanted - or maybe not. 

Because this is also the time regrets raise their ugly head. Jobs not pursued. Roads not taken. People left behind. Possibilities that could have changed the course of life. It's too late for that, my friend. Those are all thoughts that our 50 year old brain starts analysing - futilely - to gauge what could have been different or better in our lives. 

The best way to stop beating yourself up is to believe that you made the decisions given the information you had at that point in time. And regrets at the life that passed by will only make the road ahead harder. Whether you chose to get married or not, have kids or not, spent enough time with your parents and family or not - this is the time to live with those decisions. Like I said, all those choices are here to stick. 

I don't believe in regret. I believe in living with my decisions. I am 45 and I don't want to look back on choices and second guess myself. Nothing good can come out of that exercise. 

I have lived most of the highs and hopefully lows of my life. I am gutted that I'll never be 24 again but the sooner we accept that the mids of the mid life is it for us now. 

No matter how many heights you bungee jump from or how many new places you land in to discover yourself, Once you are back home, you back to your life the way it is - a result of your decisions made at different points in life. Which is why every number in our life counts, every year.