Not looking my age- Is that really the question?

“At that age I want to look like you”!- OUCH or WOW- really I do not know what to feel and how to respond when this sentence is hurled at me but the brave person that I am I always make a light banter about it and portray as if I have taken it as a compliment. I hear this lot of time after the first reaction which is “OMG is that really your age”- and I feel really ancient. Is early 30s so old? I was under the impression that the present 30s is the new 20s.

I do not know about others but for me- this is the period of my life when I am actually living and experiencing. Coming from typical Indian middle class initial years were busy completing education and by the time I was finished and achieved that first milestone of adulthood- being financially independent a quarter of my life was already over. Then for a few years- it was a constant tug of war about “settling down in other manner”- yup marry or not to marry. By the time I was done with that I had hit late 20s and that is when I realized enough is enough and it was time I started partying!! Getting a tattoo on my 30th birthday was sort of an announcement of that. I see it as a fresh chapter in my life.

Coming back to the first line of this post, why is it always about how one looks or wants to look at a particular age? How about how one feels? For me that is the question- how I feel in terms of my accomplishments. Now, do not get me wrong. I am not talking about the money I am making or position I have reached or the fact that I have a car or an apartment. For me the benchmark is the people- who have been there and done that. People who have been to places, done different stuff, met different people- basically who can actually claim to have gone through varied experiences that this world, this life has to offer. I always feel an under achiever in that sense.

Why could not I have gone for a backpacking tour after my school – (not necessarily out of the country), why could not I try my hands at few professions or jobs and then decide what I want to do further. There is a lady here in my office who has stayed all over the world- Australia, US etc etc, speaks 6 languages, has worked on a ship amongst other things. When I met her and casually asked her how her life has been- it looked liked I opened a pandora’s box- a good one though! So for me the question at her age will be : “At that age how many rich experiences have I collected”.

Sometimes I feel I am running a race against time, against people who measure success in terms of conventional things like the job you have and the number of children- before that having a spouse who is also in a high paying job, against terrorists, against global warming: all these are out there threatening to snatch away the beauty of this world before I get a chance to experience it. Of course there is this tiny issue of mortality of oneself as well. So before the global warming melts away the snow capped mountains I want to see all of them, would have loved to see the twin towers but now it is lost forever, want to laze around in beaches of Australia before the hole in the ozone layer makes it completely dangerous. You get the drift right?

One might feel that I am exaggerating- maybe I am but how else do I convey my restlessness and the intensity of my feeling on this. When I turn 50 or something I do not want to look younger instead want to be satiated in terms of my quest of “experiencing” and “exploring” all that this world and life has to offer.

So I would like to answer that comment with “Forget the looks baby-wait till you hear about what all I have seen and done”! Till that happens I have got to smile politely and say, “Thank you for the compliment” (You do not look too bad either).”