Turning 30..

Life has its very funny moments. One moment you are wondering that when is it that you will hit the “high” in life and the other moment you realize that the “high” was actually a “low”. Abstract as it may sound, it somehow sums something which I can’t exactly lay my finger at, at the moment.

I am going to turn 30 soon. There was a stage, an age, when I thought that people should die when they turn 16. But I did turn 16. I love it now. Then I thought that 25, it is. But I turned 25 too. Love, marriage and catastrophe stuck. I love that also now. And now, I will turn 30. I keep feeling that I can die any day now. I have overshot my tenure on earth. But, there is also a realisation that, dying is not a right. It is a privilege, which needs to be earned by living this life, which I am counting by the years, days, and moments.

I can be qualified as a successful woman today by most normal standards. I am 30, no major illness, working for an MNC, earning enough for survival of 4, an understanding husband, a house to my name. I had never thought at 16, that I would have all these when I am 30. Every now and then, life has sprung a surprise. I had only allowed myself to chase that surprise and I have landed here. I was scared, I was lonely, I was unhappy, unsure, but I chased. Can’t say exactly that the chase was fun, but on hindsight, it was.

But with every passing year, the inner self, which pushed the chase, is reducing. The fear, the loneliness, uncertainty win over the inner self and it’s difficult to chase the surprise and hence life is becoming predictable. And the more I hold myself from chasing the surprise, the lonelier I become. Life is not a static movie, not in the least. Even when I have held myself from the chase, other characters have not. Hence, I find myself in the same place, with characters changing by my side. The ones, who have kept pace with each other, will end up being friends/companions/partners. The others will somehow, need to win over the fear and chase. There are no excuses here, no escape routes, no knights in shining armor and no Cinderella stories. So now, when I am turning 30, I will not put a number when people should die, for 30 is just a number and not a measure of how much and how you have lived the life.