All Dar
Age is not just a number.
Age is always indicated by a number, it being a signal of order into which people and things came. But age is not just a number. The gap in years between a father and his child remains the same, all the years of their lives. And it is the same with siblings. If you have a big sister and she is 3 years older than you, when you were 3, she was twice your age. But she remains 3 years older than you even when you are 80.
In mathematics, age is what we call discrete variable — it is only measured as whole numbers. No one is 1.5 years old, just like how you can’t be 56.3 years old. Age means 1, or 2, or 53, or 54. It is until you complete a revolution around the sun that you get to add 1 to your age. It has no halves, or thirds, or fifths. Age is complete.
For us human being, as you age, you also grow (or at least you are expected to grow). And with growth, you are expected to stop doing some things and start doing other things. The expected things are there. Some of the things are cultural, some of them common sense.
It is some tribes’ culture that expects a boy who is turning into a man and gets circumcised, to stop sitting in the kitchen with his mother. It is common sense that expects a young girl to start bathing herself. Growth creates demands and expectations. Some we like, some we don’t like. But they are there.
As people grow, they settle more into not just who society demands them to be, but also into who God made them to be. They are more confident about what pastime activities they like, and which they don’t. Some friends like hiking, a lot. Others would not hike to save their lives. Some people love history, a lot. So, they go to museums. Some like to travel.
But not all ages like the same things the same way. Others like history and they watch documentaries. Others read books. Others visit museum. Others become historians. Some like traveling — by flying to places and exploring. Some like driving. Others yet, would rather do a walking tour. Even in an interest-based group, people of different ages don’t approach things the same way.
Age is not just a number, because age is our way of making sense of how many moments have passed since. It is our feeble attempt to measure time, as if we can tell time to step on a scale or stand for us to take its measurements. Time does not stop. Ever. So even when me and my friend Daniel are asked of our age and we both mention the same number, the meaning behind the number is so vast in its difference that the math fails.
Take for example two people who are both 37. 37 = 37. In math the numbers are the same. In age, one 37 there could mean a parent that died when one was young, 7 siblings, big city, public school, married, with 2 children, working in a job you hate, and barely making ends meet. The other 37, could mean with both parents, only 1 sibling, small town, never went to school, widowed, without children, successful business, doing better than enough. They have the same age, but they are not the same. And even when people are twins and raised by same parents and went to the same school, their 37s are not the same.
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Age is a reminder that time is going. And although it has never slowed down or increased speed (before you bring physics that the earth’s rotation is slightly speeding up each year and with-it days are getting slightly shorter, please know that both me and my friend studied advanced physics, and we know that the years are getting shorter by 5.5s each 1000 years), we have a tendency of saying “this year went by very fast” every December.
Age is a reminder that time is going. Age is God’s gift to us, to have urgency, to appreciate now, and to be present. All regrets are of things we did not do. You wanted to call your father and speak with him every day. Now you can’t, because he is no longer here. Seconds keep ticking whether you are doing something or not.
A young man once asked me for advice. He was 23 years of age and felt like he was late in life. He had an opportunity to go to a university and get a bachelor, but the bachelor’s degree was going to take 5 years. He felt if he was to ‘start’ living after graduating at 28 years of age, it will be too late for him. I told him that 5 years from that day, he will be 28. He can either be 28 with a degree, or 28 without a degree. The time won’t stop. Your clock on the wall may stop working, your smart watch needs to be charged. But even when you can’t tell time, time can tell you, because time has been measuring you, and what you do.
Some do so much in 33 years only. Some live to 90 and there’s little that is of substance they’ve left. It is a human desire to live long, to live longer, and if possible, to be immortal. None of it matters if we are not actually living and are just wasting age. If you want eternal life, go to Jesus Christ, and He really is asking only for faith, and not your works. But as for this life, that has an end, does require work.
Work is how we capture time, so that with the age, there is also something from said work. Work can be vision work, or productive work, or growth work, or rest work. All work is work. And perhaps, one day I will do productive work and write about these 4 kinds of work.
The pastimes, or hobbies as they are sometimes known, is a good example of rest work. Playing football does tire the body, but it may fill the soul if it something you enjoy. Driving for a long distance does make one very tired, and it does take time, a lot of time. But it is impossible to capture in words what the soul feels when you see the picturesque countryside, or when you hear the sound of OM602 engine when you are changing gears. This is what makes age not be a number. This is why people like to congregate with those who like the same things as them, so that they can spend time together.
Things too can have an age. Every car has a year of manufacturing. And it may happen that that year is before the year you were born. Sometimes people are born before a nation becomes a nation. You can be older than things, things can be older than you. Except for some things, age doesn’t mean growth. A car is a car. It doesn’t grow, or mature.
You may find yourself planning to drive from a car older than you — two cars older than you to be specific. And drive them on a land of nations older than the cars. Driving from what in time past was German East Africa (Deutsch-Ostafrika) to German South-West Africa (Deutsch-Südwestafrika). And as you plan, your mother tells you about the people where you are going, for she, in her age, has interacted with.
The plan says if we are to embark on this journey, it means a month away from home. In the months as you plan, your country goes through an election, riots, deaths, internet blackout, curfew, and more. The plan says you will leave your country in 2025 and will come back in 2026. All this planning is being made in the city of Dar es Salaam. You did not leave the city to go make this plan.
It is an All Dar plan. And at the end of it, you will become Older. But not in age. In experiences, and exposure, and learning, and growth. At the end of it you will All go back to Dar, a little Older.
