Turning 32 is not counted amongst any milestones, unlike when you turn say 10 or 20 years old. There is a certain excitement to life which you feel when you turn 10. You get to play cricket in the big boys league of your locality. You get to wear pants in school. Your parents buy you a bicycle which you can now ride to school. It feels great. You start to appreciate your hobbies- sport and cinema because you can understand what’s going on rather than rely on someone else for pop culture, often a 10+ year old senior kid. You envied to be like him. Now you are him. Turning 20 is a milestone because it hits you with a tinge of reality. It is colourful. There are multiple paths that are now visible to you. You consider to be a rebel. You find merit in the argument that that world is indeed run by scoundrels and you got to be a scoundrel to play the big game yourself. You consider to renounce everything and become a sanyasin. You consider going to the USA for your masters, because you think it is a land of self liberation. At 20, you could pretty much consider every possible option life could throw at you and try your hand at it. 20 is an age of possibilities. You are invincible. And then you hit 30. It is a milestone which is both feared & ridiculed at. Feared because from a decade of possibilities, you enter a phase of life which is almost procedural. You by now know the city you have lived in. Which potholes to avoid while driving. Which day of the week to leave early from office so that you are not stuck longer than usual. You seem so sure, that you start answering Quora threads with a certain confidence that comes only with age.
And one day, you no longer relate to the things which made sense earlier. You try figuring out what has happened. Your political thought becomes nuanced; the way you deal with colleagues, customers, the cashier at the local grocery store- you see a marked change in yourself. You are nodding more and thanking others more often than you need to. You start seeing the world other than in binaries which the political establishment wants you to see. You start worrying about your carbon footprint. You are scared for the world in which your daughter will grow up. Will this be enough? You start reading up more. It is never enough. You have opened your mind and the thirst is now seemingly unquenching. And then you understand why the 30s is ridiculed at. Because from the other side of the fence, this is all worth ridiculing.
The things that you were sure of a couple of years ago, you are no longer sure of now. And you realise that is a good thing. The world does not operate in binaries. Although it would be nice if it did. So you stop being sure and cocky on social media. What appealed to you once as a platform to stay connected and discuss no longer appeals to you. And 32 appears to be an year of inconsequence because you know, this too shall change. At 12, all of which I thought when I was 10 seemed true. Somehow, time moved slowly back then. At 22 I was saying to myself what I thought when I was 20 was destined to happen. You are adamantly idealistic. There is a tinge of boyish boorishness. At 32, I now am single minded about my flawed understanding of life when I was 30. At 32, life has opened up again fascinating me with multitudes which I did not know existed up until now.
It has made me question what I once thought was already answered. Perhaps, 32 is not an year of inconsequence.
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