Happy Birthday To...err... Me!

There’s something about birthdays just is just eerie, you know. I mean, of course there’s the excitement of, “Yay, it’s my birthday.” And then there’s, “Eeeew, I’m getting old!”
Someone wrote on my twitter timeline yesterday that old is gold but I beg to differ. I mean, like c’moooon! Can you really say that with enough conviction that aging is indeed precious? Like please, in this day and age, there’s totally nothing golden about more figures in one’s age. Don’t agree? Allow me elaborate…While growing up, kids often so optimistic about the future. You know; they want to be pilots, fashion designers, lawyers and even presidents. Oh no, don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against dreams. Dreams are good. They make the world seem so beautiful.Sad truth is, the older you get, the less dreams you live for. You sadly learn along the way that sometimes (actually more often than not), fate decides. But don’t allow my pessimistic ideas get to you. Stick to your optimism and chase your dreams, blah, blah, blah (as automated as can get hearing this from an older person who never got to achieve all their dreams and had to settle for the kind of life they currently lead)!But see, that’s the thing about age and dreams – the probability of having the two tally at the same time (or better yet, as anticipated by the individual or society) is often close to nil to nil ratio.Simply put, you get people who were expected to have been married with kids by the age of, say, 25 (or if I’m being lenient here, 30) still chasing after college girls by the age of 35 or 40, acting all cool and collected because “they enjoy staying single”. Excuse you? Like whatever happened to age and maturity, hey!And well, you also find a 25-year-old who has their life together – you know – a great job (less returns), kid(s) with absent daddy, lovely apartment/loft (unbearable rent), a partner (who might turn out to be a friend with benefit), etc. But as Jonny Depp famously says, “When you reach 25, you think ‘Shit, I’m almost 30. When you hit 30, you think about 40. And when you finally reach 40, you start thinking about who would turn up at your funeral!”What this simply mean is that as one gets older, time might flash by so fast that they may miss the Opportunity Bus; the one that comes with the dreams they had as kids. So as they turn 25 and are a teacher instead of a lawyer, they start convincing themselves that they had always wanted to teach. When they reach 30 without a kids or a husband, they start convincing themselves and everyone around them that they had never fancied kids or “the whole marriage thing” because “it will happen when it does”. Girl please, there isn't a man who’s been able to stand you yet and you've used way too many morning after pills for that tummy to hold a baby in it (excuse my judgmental tone). Bottom line is, we pace through life trying too hard to justify our inevitable failures instead of just enjoying each day as it comes. I mean, we spend so much time wondering when a dream is going to come true, and, and, and… What we fail to realize in the process is that our lives would be passing us by while we’re busy planning how to live it. Before we know it, we would be left with a shell of who we used to be, wondering how we got here.Today’s my birthday, so I get to tell you that you need to stop crapping your life up and just live your life. Guys, this starts with finding your happy place – and it better not have anything to do with money or where you’re going to find.