I have recently found myself to be in a mid-life crisis at age 23. What does this age mean? What am I even doing? Where am I going?? Who the heck am I??? Frankly, I stopped understanding the concept of age after I outgrew my Dancing-Queen year. Now, I am at the forefront of a new phase of life, new job, new city, and new opportunities to discover myself. That is all very exciting yet terrifying at the same time, and each day brings new wisdom. 23 is weird. 24 is probably even weirder. The more I reflect on my sauntering journey through my 20's, I can't help but think how silly it is to put a label on age. Here is what I have to say about that:
Because if you really consider, we’re all lost and confused. Every single one of us. Young, old, rich, and poor, go ahead and label your muse. It doesn’t matter where you live, where you work, how many friends you have, and how many you don’t forgive. We are all lost and lonely, souls found by a pile of earth, bones, and skin.
Like flies trapped in a spider web, we know none but the milieu we are glued to. Lost in an entanglement of predators and prey, we circle each other, knowing only our ecosystem, our threats, our companions, and a shared common goal: freedom. Some of us get lucky or rather muster up brevity and a will to break through the web... but as we soar and swivel through the unknown air, freewheeling through the space we enter in a relative time to our planet and galaxy, we are lost...lost until we are trapped into some other textured web.
And the cycle goes on and on and on and on and we grow and learn and add webs to our webs and lose some along the way... but that’s okay. We are all okay because we work the web of life so methodically, so musically, and with style too... some of us more than others. With facts and figures we grow bigger and bigger, and wisp away when we’re faced with an ominous yet inevitable timeline. We race to the feigned finish line but grimace at signals of decay.
So we skip and we twirl, leaping aimlessly ahead, launching ourselves into the rousing unknown. We open many doors, who themselves once said, “when you’re a stranger, faces look ugly when you’re alone.”
Age is a strange place we all live, and it burdens us with too much left unsaid. Some are married, some are dead, and some are texting their ex to mess with your head. We grow with a number unparalleled by intelligence or spirit but utilize this quantity only for an authoritative fit. So what’s up with it?
I guess what I’m saying is it’s okay to be eager and ambivalent at the same time. No one knows what their purpose is then, now, or forever, so go ahead and cry at sunsets, or listen to true crime. It’s all a withering web in the end. So let’s wither with grace- perfectly lost, effortlessly moving.
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