Life’s one inevitability – that from the moment stars explode behind the eyes of our lustful parents we will age until we can age no more – is something each of us, in our own sweet time, must come first to realisation of and eventual acceptance. No matter how much moisturiser we smear on our faces, no matter how much collagen we inject beneath our skin, no matter how many nips and tucks, pulls and plumps, we submit our withering bodies to, the battle will always be proven futile since the outcome is always from the start the same.
I haven’t quite reached the nip/tuck years yet, though my face has, I will admit, accepted its fair share of smearings. I’m currently a mere two dozen and three and by all accounts scrubbing up quite well. I’m not one of those defeatists who thinks that with my thirtieth year approaching faster than I’d maybe like my glory days are now behind me and receding at a pace. To think as such would be to have surrendered myself to the flux to let it carry me without resistance towards the yawning void. I’m not yet ready to succumb so soon.
I have, however, reached a milestone it seems. A waypost has been passed to which I may not return and if I’m heading in the wrong direction the right track must be searched for as I wander on from here. For today is the day that I can be called a young person no more. Or so the national rail network would have me believe. No longer will I be able to board the country’s trains secure in the knowledge that being of a certain ripeness I will be eligible to travel for two thirds of the more mature full fare. No longer will I be able to flip my freshfaced photocard upon the checking of my tickets as proof of my youth. Instead, be it the burden of the knowledge of the innocence behind me or the lingering disquiet at the thought of lighter pockets ahead, it seems I must learn to suffer stoically the increased hardship that this newly granted maturity will no doubt bring.
I already managed, it should be noted, to steal an extra year beyond the stipulated point of ineligibility due to my continued studenting. That was a dubious luxury several years of previous uncertainty had conspired to allow me. Today, however, the fun must end. I have recognised and now I must begin the slow acceptance of my fate.
But how should this mature self I have today become – or should, by all accounts, have become already – comport itself in a world of others which seems constantly to push and pull and attempt to mould and in which life routinely tends to demand too much? Who or what is this self supposed be? Those who would like to see the cap and gown as the key to easing oneself into a graduate scheme, the first step of a seven year plan, the first sturdy cornerstone towards the building of a healthy corporate pension must, I feel, remain forever deluded, such is the world of others, their expectations and their inevitable disappointment. Indeed, how liberating it must be for the son of a lawyer to announce his quitting of law school in order to pursue his dream of joining a world renowned band of transgender acrobats rather than submitting himself to a life defending the indefensible. Or for Daddy’s little angel to tell the family over Christmas dinner something equally anathemic to traditional mores and to embrace the excommunication cast upon her as a final throwing off of the shackles that had constrained her for too long. But when the need to be a something or a someone becomes too much, when the call of life can no longer be ignored and the world outside awaits, whether it’s their you or your you that eventually steps forth, something must be done.
It is moments like this, in other words – such commonplace moments as that in which you realise you no longer belong in the age bracket you belonged in yesterday; that from now on you will be placing your tick in the box for the next block of five years along – that you are obliged to stop and think a while. It is at moments like this that your mortality eases its way through the crowd to nudge you in the ribs before it slinks back into anonymity once again, that life tugs on your laces just enough that your leisurely stroll is interrupted by an unforeseen trip making you hesitate and lift your head a moment before you carry on regardless. Are your convictions firm? Is your philosophy sound? Will your thoughts and actions get you where you want to be and will you be happy when you get there? Or is it all too much to risk? Is there just too much too lose? Life is short, they say. I’m sure I’ll find that out eventually. There’s time enough to get it right yet. As for my apparent fading youth, rather than surrender it without a whimper to those defeatists who would have that I accept that it has passed now I’m a mere two and one half years away from thirty, its light remains far from extinguished as I sit and type defiantly. Indeed, it burns just as bright as ever and shall do so for as long as I can keep the embers glowing.
So take your resignation and laments about what has passed and shall never come again, my youth and vigour are here to be enjoyed a good while longer no matter what the national rail network would like me to believe. My youth is here and I am living it and it is mine to be embraced, for the years of reminiscence will come round soon enough, and when they do, I want to rest secure that every drop was squeezed while I still could. Time marches on as relentless as it ever has done. I’ll be running from resignation a few years yet.
