The Taboo of Turning 30

Now that I've turned 27, I've been thinking a lot about age lately. As I get one step closer to turning 30 (wow, that's weird to read) with each passing year, I'm starting to understand why people get depressed about their age. Take a woman who's 33, unmarried, and without children. Or a man who's 36, burnt out with his job, and still feels like he hasn't accomplished what he wants to professionally.

Quite simply, 30 is a cultural milestone that we perceive as much more cruel than kind. And it all starts with the number 3. The 3 immediately signifies that we're beyond our fun and vibrant run of our twenties, that we're past our prime. We place a heavy value on our twenties, which thrive on the intersection of youth and possibility ("We were young and wild and free.") But on the surface, turning 30 seems to imply adulthood married with responsibility. That's not cool or sexy.

Age is simply a measure of time, and in the end, we're all powerless in hampering its hands. Time is an odd thing, because no matter how slow it might seem to pass during a given moment, or how many minutes and seconds you realize you've had on this earth when you look back, it all seems to have sped away behind us. That's why "where does the time go?" is as timeless a question as any. But we should all appreciate the time we've been given, because, despite the fleeting nature of youth, we haven't experienced any missing time; we've still had a youth to live.

It's also strange to compare yourself to older people in retrospect. When I moved to Nashville as a 22-year-old, I never thought much about ever being the age of my co-workers, who were 27 at the time. But now that they're 32, it didn't seem to take all that long. And it's even weirder and far more undesirable to think that in that same time span, I'll be there before I know it. So with each year that goes by, I increasingly appreciate my years in the twenties-even at 27-while simultaneously wishing I could have some of them back. And I'm sure this feeling is much more magnified for thirty-somethings.

I suppose that growing a year older is similar to the clock striking midnight on New Year's Eve. Suddenly we're in a new year that serves as the setting of a science fiction film from the 80s. Never did you think we'd ever get here. The same can be said of age. But after a little while, you accept the change and start writing the correct year on your checks.

Ironically, the only thing that can make us adjust to our age and accept our fate is the one thing working against us: time.