Last week was my 39th birthday. I tend not to make a big deal about my birthday every year. In fact, I don’t even share my birthday with friends on Facebook.
This year, Facebook did remind me of a blog post I wrote for my 30th birthday, sharing 30 lessons I had learned from life to that point. Some of them I still follow every day, but many of them I have forgotten.
Since I turned 30, I’ve gotten married, had two kids, and bought a house. My family has suffered losses that we feel every day. I changed jobs twice. Growing older in years but staying young at heart is an easy prospect for those whose age is marked only by years.
Life experience tends to make time and everything else go faster. It’s easy to forget stuff, even big stuff. It’s easy to forget to find the joy in life when the kids are making messes, or when figuring out how to refinance a mortgage, or when your boss gives you a bad performance review. It’s especially easy to forget or question your own abilities in the face of your daily responsibilities.
But just because it’s harder to remember those things doesn’t make them any less important. I’m almost a week into the last trip around the sun before my 40th birthday. On this pass, I’m going to try to be less forgetful — and do a better job following my own advice.
This one just hit me this morning: You’re only old when you wake up in the morning and feel like your best days are behind you. If you wake up every day feeling like you are about to embark on a new adventure, you will always be young – no matter how long ago you were born or how sore your body is.
Jim Eltringham 