Turning 27

So this Thursday I turned 27, which is a number that I find a little frightening.

Shoko, who’s about 8 months older than me, already turned 27 this fall, and at the time I told my friend, “Wow, I can’t believe I’m dating someone who’s 27.”

“You’re 26,” he said. “What’s the difference?”

“Because 27 officially means you are in your late 20s.” I did my best to explain. “Everyone thinks turning 25 is a big milestone, but it’s not really. 25 is only one year older than 24, and 24, 25, 26 are all in the mid-twenties. So when you turn 25, you’re only going from one mid-twenties number to another.
And 24 itself is somewhat of a transition number between early twenties and mid-twenties, so it doesn’t seem like a big deal when you hit 24. Then 25, 26 are both kind of mid-twenties. But then, wham! 27! And all of a sudden you realize you’re closer to 30 than you are to 20, closer to mid-age than to child hood.”

To which my friend replied, “Listen Joel, I’m almost 30, so shut up.”
Which I suppose will be the attitude of any older than me who is reading this. Nevertheless, it strikes me that no matter how far along we are in the age spectrum, all of us have a sense of “Oh my God, I never thought I’d actually get this old.” And so despite our relative age or youth, we all seem to find ourselves shocked at the age we’re at.

Just recently I overheard a younger Japanese friend complaining that she did not want to turn 20, and I remembered thinking the same thoughts myself at that age. I remember my freshman year at Calvin College going out with people in my dorm to celebrate someone’s 19th birthday. Having a spring birthday myself, I was always one of the younger ones in my grade, and I was still 18 at the time. But I remember one of the Sophomores saying, “You know what’s scary? On my next birthday I’m going to turn 20. Not 19, but 20.” And I realized that I myself was only a year and a half away from 20, but it seemed inconceivable that I would actually turn 20. And now 20 has come and gone a long time ago.

Although everyone knows that the laws of nature dictate they must age just like the rest of the world, I think because a large part of our identity is defined by our age, we can’t imagine growing old any more than we can imagine loosing our identity. On some level I never really believed I would turn 20, and it now seems unbelievable to be just a few years short of 30. Although I suppose I’m probably still too young to be worried about my age too much.

I’d be interested to hear if people my same age feel the same way, but recently I’ve begun to notice how many people are now younger than me. For instance, not the majority but a suprising amount of the parents of my elementary school students are younger than me. Mostly this is among the youngest students, but occasionally even as high as 4th or 5th grade. Now of course doing the math some of them must have been very young pregnancies, as young as 15 in some cases, but it still makes me feel very old when some of my fourth grade students say to me, “Oh, you’re only one year older than my mom.”

I’ve also noticed that a fair amount of people in the public spotlight, professional athletes, rock musicians, and teen idols, are all younger than me. This makes me feel very old as well.

Sometimes reading what other people my age or younger have accomplished makes me feel a bit depressed. The famous Paris Communards Raoul Rigault and Theophile Ferre were only 24 and 25 when they assumed control of security of the Paris Commune. Elisabeth Dmitrieff was only 20 when she was sent as Marx’s envoy to the Paris Commune, representing the International Workingmen’s Association. Obviously these are rather selective examples based on the books I’ve been reading the past couple weeks, but any section of history will yield similar results.

Jim Wallis, in his book “God’s Politics” records an incident in which a 23 year old American activist saved a whole crowd of Palestinians from being gun downed by the Israeli army, and I think to myself, “I’m 27, and how many lives have I saved?”

In fact, the extent of my accomplishments this far in life is pretty much, “I went to Japan.” That’s pretty much it. A bit depressing depending on who I compare myself to.