32 and counting

They say that a year older, a year wiser…hmm makes me ponder, does the expression has some ring of truth behind it? How come I don’t feel any wiser then? What have I got to show for the 32 years of my existence? A thinning and graying top, a rounder middle and heavier bottom, that’s showing now. Wonder what I would feel like another 10 more years. The only thing that is acting my age is my waistline, that also is about a year older.

This year my birthday falls on the second day of Eid, and with that I declare it as a public holiday to all the masses in Malaysia. My birthday is sandwiched in between the Sultan of Pahang (24^th October) and my mom ( 26^th October). So this year we had a double celebration, and if we were to put all the candles it would be 90 on the cake.

The age difference between my siblings is as follows:

Me to my 2^nd brother : 2 years

My 2^nd brother to 3^rd brother : 3 years

My 3^rd brother to 4^th sister : 4 years

My 4^th sister to youngest sister : 6 years

Almost everyone birthday would get celebrated, mostly it’s a family affair. I can’t recall the last time we had a birthday party with guests around. I think for my birthday maybe it was in 1985/1986, man that was way long ago. Maybe they had it when I wasn’t around. For me, at least for now, age is nothing but a number.

I leave you all with a quotation from Samuel Ullman : -

Youth is not a time of life—it is a state of mind.
It is not a matter of red cheeks, red lips and supple knees.
It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a tempermental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over a life of ease.
This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of twenty.
Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old by deserting their ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair—these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust.

Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being’s heart a love of wonder;
the sweet amazement at the stars and starlike things and thoughts;
the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what comes next, and the joy in the game of life.

You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt;
as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

In the central place of your heart there is a wireless station.
So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, grandeur, courage, and power from the earth, from men and from the Infinite—so long are you young.
When the wires are all down and the central places of your heart are covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then are you grown old, indeed!

Samuel Ullman (1840-1924)