I'm Old. You're Old. We're All Old.

One of my friends constantly reminded me that as soon as I turned 20, it would be down hill from there. Yeah it was a joke, and I treated it that way until I realized that the day after I played basketball, my back started hurting, my muscles were sore, and walking wasn't as easy as it used to be.

I'm starting to get older, and it's slowly starting to hit me. Yeah, yeah, it's only 20, I'm about to hit my prime, and I'm not really old, but you know what, the definition of old for me is what I thought it was when I was a kid. Old was your parents taking your advice genuinely, living by yourself (plus a roommate) and making a majority of your own decisions. Old was learning how to make the right choice. Old is finding out that some of your friends are engaged, and realizing that you're going to hit that 9-5 within a couple of years. Old is watching your cousins become the age you remembered like it was yesterday, except that you're 9 years older than him.

I can go on, but you get the picture. And according to that definition, I'm in that old picture.

I don't ask for birthday gifts from my parents anymore, and this year, I tried a different path; I asked my dad for some advice. What he told me made me realize that as you get older, you need to look at life differently.

The way you lived your life, how you made decisions, they were all based on a preset notion of what your overall goal was. Was the goal to have fun? Was it to gain some knowledge at school? These goals determine your lifestyle and choices, and these goals change as you get older. I can say that I knew of the concept and it made sense, but I never thought about it, and it never hit me until this year. It was some of the simplest and best advice I have ever received in my life, and it has the potential to shift my life in a huge way. Whether his advice holds true or not, only time will tell; I'm going to take it for a test drive in the following years, and I will pass it on if it holds up. Regardless of the outcome, however, that transcending idea of adapting to your age is going to carry on no matter what.

Maybe getting older isn't such a bad thing. If your goal was to have fun, you were happy succeeding in it. If your goal changes to do well in school, and you pull a 4.0, then you again will be happy. If your future goal is to live on the beach, and travel internationally on business, and you are working towards that goal, then you may be happy, even if you're old in that process.

I used to fear getting older, mostly because I didn't want to hit the stage where I couldn't compete with the young'uns on the basketball court. I didn't want to get to the world where every day was a work day without real summer/winter vacations and taking a road trip to watch a football game did not happen as often as it should. But, those were all bad because they went against my current mind set. Maybe when I get older, that won't be what I'm looking for in life, and missing out on that won't be as bad.


That being said, as the younger one of our year, I'm going to age a little slower than the others, so thank god for that.

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S.O.T.D.

Outkast - So Fresh, So Clean

Youtube Clip

MJ loses to a CEO at one-on-one. Yes, at basketball, not at managing a company, or say, a basketball team.
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