In a
couple of nights we will be celebrating New Year's Eve. It's like the world's
birthday. But what’s in an age?
Well,
a lot, and most of it bad.
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| "Happy Birthday Earth" - Earthlings, 01/01/2014, 00:00 |
As a
child a birthday can be a wonderful thing. Each one is a colourful opportunity
to celebrate with friends and family. Your life is defined by your age, or,
more accurately, your date of birth. It decides what class you enter into at
school and what sports teams you play in, and by extension it largely
designates your circle of friends and partly your relative position of
seniority within that circle. In our younger years, every birthday seems like
the beginning of a new era, a fresh beginning. You wake up feeling more
respected and more responsible. Personally, I had a period during which I was
convinced I woke up physically taller on my birthday. You also get presents and
recognition. It’s great.
Then
as a teenager, birthdays begin to provide real opportunities. Drinking,
driving, working, etc. (and by 'etc.' I mean 'naughty business'). The doors of
the world begin to really open up to you. You take the new responsibilities on
hungrily until one day, usually sometime around your early twenties, you realise
that there are no more opportunities to be opened, no further rights to be
bestowed, no more inches to grow. After this point, birthdays take on a new
complexion. No longer do they signify freedom, respect, recognition or anything
much exciting at all.
This
is something I have learnt, to my displeasure. Soon, it will be 2014, the year
I turn 24. I am not looking forward to it at all.
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| Sad birthday man (not me) |
Dark
and unsettling thoughts are starting to creep into my mind now.
For
one, I am beginning to wonder if I have already passed my physical prime. I
work now. No longer in university, I realise what that means. I sit down in
front of a computer for (at least) 40 hours a week and… work. Why? For… money!
I literally work for money! Mostly anyway. I remember being asked by my old
music teacher at a parent-teacher meeting (oh god, I remember those – and so do
my parents) what I wanted to do when I was older. I just said I didn't want to
work in an office. Oh the shame I should feel! Future me was supposed to be so
much more interesting and mobile. Instead, here I am, getting fatter by the day
while two LED screens continuously assault my retinas. Now I wonder if I will
ever be as fit again as I was leaving university, just post the heady days of
going to the gym out of boredom and an abundance of free time, with very little
of my reserves of self-motivation drained at all. I guess it’s all downhill
from here. I am even thinking of taking on a second job. Have to pay for those
future medical bills somehow.
Future
bills.
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| B******* |
At
what age do I start saving for my pension? How in the name of god do I do that
living in Slovakia? What do other 23-year-olds do? I'm sure they don't think
about this, but that doesn't mean it isn't dumb as hell.
Yep,
this is another burden of the birthday – figuring out where we are in life by
the relative age, achievements and responsibilities of others. That makes no
sense at all, but we all feel it.
The
dreaded day comes around. ‘Happy birthday’ you hear from all over, and everyone
is delighted. You go out drinking, and who can blame you? With all that I have
just mentioned, what else could you do? Especially with everyone seemingly so
upbeat about your slow demise into a deeper adulthood. To the bar we go, en
masse, to celebrate our fellow as his biological clock ticks further upwards to
its eventual nothing. And that's another thing! It’s in our heads somewhere,
every birthday from that some point in our twenties – death, I mean. You might
call me macabre, but it is there in our subconscious with every tick of the
annual clock. It is the defining characteristic of age. Without it, we have no
concept of youth, no concept of career, of life's progression, of retirement.
The first national age of retirement was set in Germany at the average age of death.
That average number gives context to our lives. And so we drink, and yes, we
really do celebrate because, though our age and our birthdays are a horrible
psychological burden to us all, it is a burden we share together.
Happy
New Year everyone (though god knows why we celebrate that).
