I have a couple of announcements before launching into my usual, slanted hyperbole.
First off, I am writing a year-long column for Radford University’s Whim Internet Magazine. Titled “From the Outside,” it will feature stories from me and other alumni about our time at RU and how it has impacted our lives after graduation. If you are an RU alum, feel free to send your stories my way.
Second, if it wasn’t official already, you can Take it from Snee every Wednesday here at SeriouslyGuys. It’s my favorite way to celebrate Hump Day, and it should be yours, too.
Okay, those are out of the way. On to the rant.
I’m tired of hearing about “40 being the new 30,” “30 being the new 20” and etc. It’s bad enough that we kid ourselves into feeling younger than our actual years, but now we’re trying to justify it with euphemistic self-delusions?
If you are 40, but act like a 30-year-old, you aren’t 30 years old. You’re a 40-year-old who’s acting like a 30-year-old with bad knees and/or a bad back. Besides, what’s the difference between 30 and 40 anyway (, asked the 26-year-old)? Is there some magical transformation in those 10 years? Is it okay to impregnate teenagers at 30, but not at 40? Does hang-gliding come with an age limit? Does your hair not fall out because you feel 30?
For those playing at home, the answers are “very little,” no, no, no and “it’s not really a factor because not everyone loses their hair at 40.”
We secretly know that the idea is ridiculous: just look at “30 being the new 20.” This statement implies that it’s okay if you’re 30 and still living at home because it’s the new 20. It’s “perfectly normal” that you’re waiting for your peers to divorce so you can date people your own age for the first time since college. Your lifeguarding job is “building up a resume” while you wait for the job market to improve. Those toys you’re bidding for on e-bay are collectibles, not evidence of your virginity.
It’s, for the sake of being SFW, balderdash.
Years are nothing but numbers. They’re a unit of measurement in the fourth-dimension, which is much bigger than how we feel. Complaining about our material journey through time and space makes as much sense as complaining about the mass of your molecular structure. (Okay, so we’re worried about being fat, too.)
And sure, age runs our bodies down. And maybe with modern health practices, we don’t deteriorate as fast, but you’re still 40 years old. And that’s where the real bull puckey comes to play: instead of acknowledging our years of growth, experience and wisdom, we’re trading it in to act like self-absorbed teenagers again.
Remember how you acted as a teenager or 20-year-old? And look around at the actual 20-somethings around you. Do you really want to be like that again, or even just associated with them? And perhaps that’s why our generation doesn’t recognize a need to grow up: because you have refused to.
Like most widely-accepted relations, we’re associating two dissaparite facts and blowing them out of proportion. Age, in our case, is merely an indicator of years. While our bodies wear down with age, there is no set schedule, and it varies based on genetics and health. Unfortunately, because we are consumers, we equate age with “time to buy a new one,” whether one is a new car, trophy wife or egg salad sandwich.