I’m 28 years old.
This statement sounds simultaneously right and wrong when I say it. My 27th birthday (March 23rd) arrived right after the U.S. lockdown, when grocery shelves were empty and everyone was indoors. I made myself an odd orange cake, a recipe literally written during the great depression. While that choice seems too on the nose, it was the only thing I could make with the store’s sparse selection of ingredients. My 28th birthday was also celebrated in the partial shadow of quarantine, by that point I was half vaccinated but I was still socially distant from my social skills. To be honest, I’m still getting used to this new age in this new era. I don’t know anyone who is the same person they were in December 2019. In one way or another, we’re all catching up to the jump we took through covid time, as we collectively slipped into isolated wormholes and are now slowly coming out the other side.
The concept of age has always felt illusive. Growing up, my mother told me she was 23 and that my dad was 8 years older. I later found out that he is only 6 years her senior. I’ve learned both their real ages after accidentally seeing birth dates stamped on hospital wristbands. I was 15 when I calculated my mom’s age and 23 when I did the math for my dad. Despite the facts, there is still a tiny part of me that now feels older than my mother, frozen in time at 23 years young.
Being out of sync with my age isn’t new. After bearing taking on the weight of parental responsibility around the time I turned five, I felt eternally older than my classmates. I didn’t know anyone else whose family outings were three hour drives to the pain management clinic. Or any kid who had to ensure their mother took the proper number of muscle relaxants after her oxycontin. While there probably were kids who checked their mother’s breath with a mirror at night I never encountered them. Unsure of how to describe this reality to my peers, I spent a lot of time alone, observing the children at play.
After years of feeling elderly, that became reality: in high school I was a year older than everyone in my grade, I dropped out 3 weeks into Freshman year (another story for another time). At the time I was somewhat embarrassed by this fact and did my best to be vague about my age. Mostly because I didn’t want to tell the story and risk getting emotional over unprocessed bits of my narrative.
Of course there’s the phrase, age is just a number. BUT numbers form the basis of mathematics which is the closest thing we have to a universal language. If anything, that phrase doubles down on the significance of age.
I would argue age is just a feeling.
Like everything else in this world it is temporary and it certainly isn’t sequential. Age is personal. Perhaps everyone has an age range that suits them best, like a style of clothing. When my mother claimed 23 as her perma-age, it made sense to me. She met my father, the love of her life at age 23. She was writing constantly, performing in a band with her boyfriend (my dad!) and hitting the gym, lifting weights like the 1980’s hottie that she was. For the first time in her life she felt cared for and free.
The day I turned 25 I felt like myself for the first time. I finally understand the root of this sensation: as a high schooler, being 25 sounded SO old to me. Suddenly I reached an age where the preconceived notions surrounding the number matched the weight on my shoulders. 26 and 27 largely centered around relieving myself of those heavy burdens, learning how to walk with a posture of self respect. With that relief came a renaissance of sorts, filled with exciting experiences I would attribute to the life of an early twenty-something.
There’s no age that I’ve wanted to pin down like a butterfly, hoping to preserve a specific set of wings. Every year, month, week I endeavor to fly a little higher, but never too close to the sun. Flight can only occur when wings are able to expand and contract, catch the wind and ride it.
To transcend, one must be in the moment as much as possible, while maintaining The Big Picture. The little pieces will present themselves when the time is right, given The Big Picture has space for them to appear.
It’s similar to looking at a landscape from an airplane: mountain ranges appear like crinkled paper, you can see bits of the river peeking out from between the treetops. The colors on the mountain change as the sun travels across the sky, you know that branches drop their leaves in the winter. The river levels rise and fall, sometimes the current becomes too strong to take on. You don’t need to obsess about all the details to enjoy the beauty of the image. If you change the direction of your gaze, it isn’t surprising that the view changes too. Meanwhile, you’re present in your physical being, aware of the minute sensations occurring on your skin like the air passing across your neck. Maybe awareness is found in your fingers as they grasp a cool glass of water, wet with condensation.
With enough distance, looking backward in time is like this too. Daily upsets can’t be seen on the radar, defining moments are present but their dimensions and detail are lost to the atmosphere.
Patterns are still most visible, like crop circles or the grids of a city:
Those themes extend through time and instruct our trajectory. We’re able to detect them with the benefit of distance.
The next time something comes up and ruffles my feathers, I hope to think about that distance. Is my time is well spent engaging with annoyance if it just becomes a shade in a single configuration?
The choice to let go will always be there, no matter what age I find myself.
In the end, when I truly take flight and transcend the physical, the patterns and designs I’ve made will live in this realm long beyond me.
Age really will just be a number. And I’ll be timeless.
Thank you for tuning in today.
I’ll see you on Friday with a Meditation Prompt for subscribers and Sunday with Moments for Now.
If you find yourself struck by a moment of total now, document it as a ritual of presence. Take a photo or write a short description, then send it to momentsfornow@gmail.com - all submissions will be shared anonymously.
until then,
James