Growing Older
I cried on my twentieth birthday.
Some people laughed when I told them. After all, twenty is young. Life is just beginning. Why would anyone cry about getting older at twenty?
But I wasn’t crying because I felt old.
I was crying because I was scared.
Scared of the future. Scared of becoming someone I didn’t recognize. Scared that time would move too fast and leave me behind.
As a girl from a small town in a small country, I grew up with big dreams. Dreams larger than the streets I walked; larger than the world I knew. Yet sometimes those dreams feel heavy. The future feels vast. And standing at the edge of adulthood, I often wonder what waits for me there.
Then I read Tuesdays with Morrie.
In the seventh Tuesday, Morrie talks about aging. He says that people are often unhappy with their age. Young people want to be older. Older people want to be younger. Everyone seems to be looking in a different direction, wishing they were somewhere else.
But Morrie asks a simple question:
Why would you want to be younger?
That question stayed with me.
Would I really want to be sixteen again?
Sixteen-year-old me was deeply insecure. She stayed inside her comfort zone because she was afraid of failing. She struggled to speak up for herself. She worried about what everyone thought. She knew very little about the world and even less about herself.
I don’t miss being her.
I love her. I am grateful for her. But I don’t want to go back.
Because every year since then has taught me something.
Every mistake made me wiser.
Every heartbreak made me stronger.
Every challenge forced me to grow.
The person I am today exists because of the years I have already lived.
So why would I wish them away?
The truth is, aging is one of the few things completely outside our control. We cannot bargain with it. We cannot pause it. We cannot reverse it.
Time moves forward whether we welcome it or not.
And perhaps that is exactly why we should stop fighting it.
Get Prashiksha Dahal’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
When we envy youth, we often forget what youth actually is. It is confusion. It is uncertainty. It is learning through mistakes. It is having questions and very few answers.
There is beauty in youth, but there is beauty in every age.
With age comes understanding.
With age comes perspective.
With age comes the ability to look back and see lessons where we once saw failures.
The older we become, the more life reveals itself to us.
Aging is not the slow decay of who we are.
It is the gradual construction of who we are becoming.
Each year adds another layer of wisdom.
Another story.
Another lesson.
Another piece of ourselves.
A tree does not apologize for its rings. They are proof that it survived every season it was given.
Why should we be ashamed of our years?
One day I may be forty and wish I could speak to my twenty-year-old self.
Not because I miss being twenty.
But because I will want to thank her.
Thank her for being brave enough to step into an uncertain future.
Thank her for taking risks despite her fear.
Thank her for understanding something that many people spend their whole lives learning:
Growing older is not losing youth.
It is gaining life.
And perhaps the goal was never to stay young forever.
Perhaps the goal was to keep growing.
