Meditation on Turning Thirty

Turning thirty isn't just anti-climactic; it’s the Y2K of birthdays. All the fear and trepidation, the nervous anticipation and the excitement of crossing this generational threshold, dissolve into the realization that for the rest of the planet (save those that share your birthday) it’s just another day in the world. Even for me, as in-tune with the universe as I am, there really wasn’t a perceptible difference between my birthday and the day before. Now that it’s come and gone, the following days have been eerily similar to the celebratory one. All this time I thought turning thirty would automatically earn me the respect of my peers and the admiration of many. You can imagine my disappointment when I found out those two things need to be earned through hard work. What a rip off.

But one day just doesn’t seem like it’s enough to commemorate this milestone of entry into my fourth decade. It’s for this reason that I have decided to celebrate not just a birthday, but an entire birthday-fest for the next ten days, culminating in a concert with a band I’ve never heard of before. It will be there, on the dance floor, that I will be forced to admit that my birthday has come and gone for another year, and that I will never see thirty, again.

It’s been a good birthday, and celebrated over the projected course of ten days, I dare say it’s been and will continue to be great, albeit significantly less ruckus than birthdays past. Excitement it seems is now found at the bottom of a couple of pint glasses and in the company of good friends. My sense of getting older is that aging affords us the luxury of finding the pleasant in the simple. Still, like dating documents with the wrong year shortly after January 1st, I’ve caught myself introducing myself as “29-year old Geoffrey” and not his vastly more mature, thirty-year old counterpart.

The 20’s were generally a good decade for me, but not great. I had subscribed to some bad behaviour and put enough self-induced roadblocks in my life that entering thirty has been met less with fanfare than a grand sigh of relief. I did a lot in my twenties that I’m not proud of (and will resist embellishing), but without sounding dense, it seems like a necessary period of time for me to get where I am today, even if the journey is reminiscent the Purgatorio. The twenties weren’t all doom and gloom either. I was fortunate enough to maintain some great friendships and for six years, enjoy the company of a wonderful woman who helped me realize that the burden of the world is cut in half when born on two sets of shoulders.

But thirty marks a turning point for me, and for that, I’m excited. And it’s not just me, the general consensus of my friends who are older than me swear that, “the thirties are the best!” I might lack the courage to ask whether this was a beer-induced revelation or not, but it seems a hopeful observation.

A former employer of mine who had celebrated his sixtieth birthday earlier in the year pulled me aside and asked what I thought of turning thirty. I explained to him that it wasn’t too bad, but that I sort of felt like I was getting old (which, all things considered, is kind of a dumb statement—it’s not as if any of us are getting younger, despite what TV ads for skin cream might suggest). He smiled and leaned in, “turning thirty isn’t too bad. In fact, turning forty and fifty aren’t that bad either.” He paused, leaned backed and winked “But when you turn sixty? That’s when you know you’re starting to get old.”