Twenty

Today is my twentieth birthday. This is the point when I begin to count my age in decades. Twenty is not old, but it is 22% of the way to 90, an average lifetime in my genealogy. Of course, a lot of people don't make it to twenty. I know of a few people who were not able to see their twentieth birthday. They were either taken from this world unnaturally early via disease or accident, or took themselves. I have lived longer than they were able to. Given my aggressively empirical philosophy of life, high-adrenaline, high-speed, and (calculatedly) higher-risk choice of sports and hobbies, I have to be thankful for the intact body and mind I still hold. I am certainly fortunate. Maybe it is luck that allows some of us to live and leaves others to die. Or maybe choice of actions and decisions. Or fate. Destiny. Who knows. All I know is that I am twenty years old, and through any combination of the above, I am very much still alive.

Yesterday (really just a few hours ago,) I attended the graduation ceremony for the class of 2010 at Amador. I know quite a few kids who are graduating, namely siblings of my friends, so it was nice to see them experience the grand closing of their high school years. But I set them aside for awhile as I sat there in the AVHS bleachers and watched graduation unfold, this time as a spectator instead of a participant. "It seems like it was just yesterday" is a phrase that is revoltingly cliché, but I still have to use it. It seems like it was just yesterday that I was sitting down there on that field. The tent was in the same place, the stage, the perfectly aligned white folding chairs. The sun went down at the same angle in the sky (although this time it wasn't reddened by giant clouds of ash.) The six hundred some-odd purple-cloaked figures entered the field in nearly the same formation, past the same black-robed teachers. It was like experiencing our graduation over again in third-person.

I wasn't really thinking about where these new graduates will go in life. After all, they will have plenty of time to think that through individually. I did congratulate them before and after the ceremony, and bid them good luck on the new stretch of open road before them. During the ceremony, though, I was lost in the moment all over again. Lost in the sea of purple. I remembered quite clearly where I sat on June 13th of 2008. I remembered what I saw, what I felt, and what I thought about my future. That was point A. I am now at point B. I was Link. I placed the Master Sword back in the stone. The two elapsed years of my college education were not relevant, not individual events anyway. They became a blur. It was only myself, and myself on graduation day, in row 5, seat six, at 19:48.

As always, things have not turned out quite as I expected. Some things are better than I had anticipated, some much worse, and some depressingly or in some cases thankfully unchanged. I wish I could talk to young Link. It would certainly be an interesting conversation. People sometimes ask the question "if you could go back in time and talk to one person, who would it be?" I often surprise them by answering "myself." I think the two of us would agree that where I am now is largely satisfactory.

And twenty is a good age. I don't really have anything life-threatening to worry about. Most people don't begin to show any serious concern for their age and rethinking their philosophy and goals until their forties and fifties. I think I'm an anomaly in the sense that I seem to be in a perpetual state of mid-life crisis: always questioning, pondering what I have done and should do next. It's not really a bad thing--I am not depressed nor do I regret any of my decisions or actions. I simply have an active mind. And with that inquisitiveness, I think I will hold fast to the goals I have previously set for myself--my plan seems to be working. At age twenty, I would like to continue to learn--learn on all fronts, academically, kinesthetically, logically, artistically--to apply myself in my work, and to have fun incessantly.

Here I am. 02:27 on my twentieth birthday, alone, drinking a Kiwi-Strawberry Hansen's soda and listening to Tom Petty. At first I thought I'd rather be doing something more interesting on this milestone. Maybe at a party with friends. Maybe doing something adrenaline-packed like I usually do. Maybe out under the stars. Maybe with a girlfriend. But after looking back on graduation, and the goals I set for myself then, this is just fine. There's nowhere else I'd rather be.

Happy Birthday, to me.

Current Mood: Satisfied

Listening To: "A Face In The Crown" by Tom Petty