Another year older, another year experience

I've hit another milestone this week, once again reaching the celebration date that is my birthday. This Saturday I will officially be the ripe age of 23. It's hard to believe that I always looked at 23 as such an old age. If you’d asked me when I was 8 what I’d be doing right now I would have probably told you I would be happily married with a family, a house and hard at work on my respectable career as either a World Wrestling Federation superstar or an American Gladiator. It seemed feasible at the time.

But I realize it’s a lot different than I’d anticipated now that I've reached this age of young adulthood. I am far from marriage, I have yet to figure out what my career will be and I don't think I have the pectorals nor the lats to be a gladiator.

The early to mid-twenties can seem like such a frightening old age for some students. Often times people fear it's when their youth begins to slip away. Well, I refuse to accept the idea that 23 is old.

Birthdays are benchmarks for how far you’ve come in life, but there are certain birthdays that are held in anticipation just a little more than others. At 16 you’re sweet and at 18 you’re a legal adult, even though the Jewish right of passage says this happens at 13, but let's be real – should 13-year-olds really ever be considered adults?

Then, of course, there’s the 21st birthday, the day that is held in anticipation, for some as the peak of existence; you can get in anywhere now and are at the prime of your youth – right? What I realized a year ago was that the other side of that coin is that after your 21st birthday you are just considered old. I realized this on my 22nd birthday when person after person had almost the identical reaction to my new age: “You're 22? Man you’re getting old!”

That’s when it hit me, I will now always be considered "old" on my birthday. If I was old when I was 22, I’m pretty sure I’ll be called old as I turn 23, and 24, 25 and so on...

What ages are there to look forward to after 21? The only other birthdays that enable any unlocked privileges come when I turn 25 and I can rent a car, and at 55 I can order from the senior menu at Denny’s.

But why should I feel old? I have yet to hit the quarter-century mark. The truth is, age is man-made. Your birthday just represents the calendar day you were born, and your age just represents the number of years that have passed since then. We should not fear the number that represents how long we’ve been on this earth.

We live in an ageist society in this day of silicon, Botox and Rogaine. Now more than ever do we feel the pressure to look and feel younger. We are constantly under the gun, threatened by the rapid speed of life. We are practically forced to feel insecure about getting older and all the out-of-touch side effects that come with it.

We need to embrace the number that our age identifies us as. Think about where you are right now. Do you know more about life and the world we live in than you did a year ago? And you will be that much more experienced a year from now, and the year after that and so on. With age comes experience, and with experience comes knowledge, and knowledge is golden. The world around us is a great tutor of wisdom, and if we keep our minds open we can truly learn just a little bit more every day.

You can’t hate yourself for getting older, because you’ll just despise yourself more and more every day. Don’t be afraid that one day you’ll wake up and be 40, 50 or 100. Because when those days come you will have lived 40, 50 or 100 years worth of life, and you’ll appreciate everything those years have taught you. Whether the experience was good or bad, it was experience and you learned from it.

In this crazy world there are few things that are certain, but one sure thing is that tomorrow you will be older than you are today, so embrace it. Who knows what you may learn tomorrow.