Twentysomething

I turned twenty two this month..

Yeah, I know. There is no need for the dramatic ".." after stating that you've turned twenty two. That's what I think too. But let's see about this anyway.

Since me and my friends have turned twenty and I've endlessly heard this: "We're getting old".. "I don't want anyone to know my age anymore".. "I'm removing my birth year on FB".. "Aaaaaaaaah!".. All of these with an ascending intensity with each year of course.

At first, I thought they were kidding. I mean, unless you are considering a modeling career, you shouldn't start calling yourself "old" at twenty two. In fact, as med students, the exact opposite is true. Your experience increase with years, you learn more, you acquire more skills. In short, years grant you acknowledgment and value.

The passage of years reminds you though of how precious every minute is. With every year that passes there are things that are gone forever. Being twenty two means that you'll never be the brilliant third year med student who made a brilliant discovery that would award you The Noble Prize years later (confidently assuming you are not the discoverer of Helicobacter Pylori reading this)

Few days ago a couple of high school girls shared a cab with me. They went on talking about school and courses and teachers and all the endless sanawya amma circus, and they happened to have the same teachers I had back in high school. They had the same worries, same comments on the teachers, same complaints and even same jokes. At that moment all these memories came very vividly back to me as if I were still living through them, and then I thought "It has been five years"! How come it feels just like the other day?

Friends I've known since I was six and spent the entire school years with, each of us took a different road when we went to college. I still have precious few of them very close till now, but most of them have turned into complete strangers with lives I know nothing about. We used to share every detail of our lives together one day, years ago.

Everyday that passes answers some questions about your future. Everyday takes you a step forward towards the person you'll end up being. Then one day you'll realize that you finally "are". Every aspect of you has come to existence and there aren't many questions left to be answered. I think it would be a moment both relieving and fearful. Life loses its glamour when there is nothing left to curiously wait for, nothing left to hunt and chase, no more hopes for change, for being a better person than the one you are today. You are what you are and there can't be more to it. A dreadful moment it is, and if I live long enough to it, I don't want to look back and feel I've wasted a lifetime.

Twenty two is not old. Twenty two means that "now" will probably lie in your past more than it has lied in your future as all your life still stretches ahead of you. You can still be any one, go anywhere, make new friends and still get to spend a lifetime with them. Twenty two means you still have time to build a whole new world around you. You can still fix yesterday's mistakes and make new ones. It means the best hasn't come yet.

Twenty two definitely means you're young, in every meaning the word could give..