Well…I’m 25 now. Thanks for the Facebook wishes, everyone. That’s probably the most action my page has seen since…well, last year.
Crazy though…I’m finally 25. Didn’t feel all that different waking up this morning. I guess I didn’t really expect anything too different – getting too old for that. But if we’re being totally honest here, up until my 21st birthday, I always had this tiny hope that I’d wake up one morning to a life-changing experience. Something like a pair of lawyers in dark suits knocking on my door to reveal that I’d inherited some vast fortune that I could only access once I turned XX years old. Or maybe some latent superpowers that would only activate once I turned XX years old.
(I’m sure everyone’s had thoughts like this, right? Anyone…? *crickets* Darn it.)
Well, after 21, I kind of gave up on those thoughts. (Yes, yes, that was 4 years ago. Don’t judge.) I mean, if I were granting some vast inheritance to some poor kid, Great Expectations-style, I’d probably do it when the kid was young or on an “important” birthday for the kid, like 18 or 21. I’d have to be pretty cruel to wait for something stupid like age 22.
I think this was my last chance. 25 is pretty much the last round number left for me. And lo, another year has passed, and the only superpower I have gained is the ability to not be charged an extra $25 a day when renting a car. Whee.
The point is, I was hoping for something different today. Not so much superpowers or an inheritance, but this feeling I get when I think about a 25-year old. You know that exercise where psychologists say a word, and then you’re supposed to say the first thing that comes to your mind? When I think of a 25-year-old, the first thing that comes to mind is the time when I was in the youth group at NCBC, maybe in the 7th or 8th grade. Back then, the adults would all take their sweet time doing old-Korean-person things after church, so a bunch of the youth group kids would walk over to the park after church. Some of the young adults noticed that we were doing this every Sunday, so they opened their house up sometimes for people.
I’m not sure what I saw in them. The house was really messy, after all, a bunch of guys lived there. I didn’t really understand too much of what they said or what they did. All I knew is that I was walking among giants who were way too cool for me to talk to, and that their lives were perfect in ways that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
Today, I’m cynical enough to know that the probably weren’t all that tall, and that they had problems, just like I do today. Even so…I dunno. Don’t get me wrong, my life is far better than I deserve. I have peace, a purpose, friends to love, and Vietnamese sandwiches. My life is great.
But for just one moment…it would be nice to have the same feeling about my own life that I once had about those nameless giants…just once.
-Tim