A few days ago I turned 27. The age I have been dreading for at least 7 years. It’s very different from 20. Being 20 is exciting. You’re finally an adult and new opportunities are just there waiting for you to take them, right? It’s very different from 25. Being 25 is fun. You’re not as naive anymore, you know what you want, and you’re still young enough to pursue those things, right? Even 26 sounds fine. It’s still close to 25, nothing to worry about.
Now you’re 27. It’s the age when everyone thinks it’s their duty to remind you that you are almost 30. That your days of youth are basically over: welcome back pains and weak knees! Jokes on them, that started a long time ago.
Recently I became more aware of time passing. When you’re a child, the concept of ‘time’ is almost non-existent. When you are a teenager, you become aware of it, but it’s still an old people’s problem, you still have the rest of your life ahead of you. Then you suddenly reach an age when you most likely witness death for the first time. Someone you’ve known for your entire life — just gone, forever. And now the conversations about them turn into past tense. You look at old childhood pictures with less excitement and more longing: it’s not a fun activity anymore to remember how your boomer parents dressed when they were younger or even worse — how they dressed you when you were a child. Now you look at those photographs, trying to reconstruct the stories they hold, almost like a documentary film.
There’s mum running after me. She’s wearing her denim summer dress. She looks so beautiful. And her smile is so bright and happy. She still has her cheerful laughter, but doesn’t laugh as much anymore.
There’s dad lifting me in his arms. I used to be his little princess. His head was full of dark hair, he used to play basketball for his local team. Now his hair is mostly grey and basketball is long gone in the past.
In those pictures both of them are so much younger than I am now.
There’s grandma, holding my hand as we walked back home from my doctor’s appointment. She is in her 40’s in those pictures, the same age as my mum now. I never realised how quickly she aged, after all, she was always “grandma” to me. Yet she did, and now continues living as a fond memory from my childhood.
What were their dreams? What did they hope for? Were they ever afraid? Did their lives turn out the way they wanted? Do they have any regrets?…
I found myself thinking about these things a lot in the past couple of years. I don’t know if this awareness came with age. Possibly not. I think people mature at their own pace — some much earlier, some much later. Either way, the realisation hit me relatively recently, and I think it made me learn one thing: time didn’t become faster. It was never slow to begin with. Time is just there, It exists within us and around us. It was before and will be after. It doesn’t speed up on Sunday and then decide to take a break and slow down on Monday.
Remember your childhood. Back then it seemed like time almost didn't exist at all. Remember the time you felt the happiest. Didn’t it feel like time almost stopped at that moment? Like there is no yesterday or tomorrow? I think moments like that are the ones we want to relive and turn into a habit.
I turned 27. I haven’t figured out my life by 25. I didn’t grasp any opportunities when I was 20. I am not 26 anymore, but it is fine. I am starting to do those things now. Being aware of the time passing and knowing that inevitably you’ll end up being a character in those pictures, that someone from the future might see and try to figure out, helped me understand what I want to spend the time I have on. Which things are important and which are not. It helped me be braver and take risks. Something you’d probably do in your early 20’s, right?
I grew older, but I have never felt this young before. Do I know what I’m doing? Probably not. But when do we? Did the people from the old photographs ever know? And it’s okay. At least I figured out one thing — I want to be happy and I am not afraid of it anymore. The rest is relatively simple really.
The awareness of time helped me grow closer with the people I love. I realise how fragile life is. And I want to learn their stories, learn about the people they used to be — the people from the old photographs that seem so familiar, but still are strangers to me.
I used to be afraid of growing up and becoming like my mum. And yet I feel like I am turning out to be her exact copy. And it’s not so bad. Now that I know her better. We accept our family as close people by default. But rarely do we actually take our time to get to know them. As friends. Who knows, one day you might realise that mum was right, some things lose value over time, others, on the contrary, grow. And you don’t want to spend your time and emotions on the wrong ones.