In the dim light of reflection on another birthday, the boundaries of time and age seem to converge. I’m now on the cusp of 30, an age that once seemed so distant when I was in my roaring 20s. “What’s the big deal about turning 30?” you might ask. Is not just a number or a symbol. Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” and this year, the examination digs deep.
I must confront the uncomfortable truth: I have not lived up to my own vision of what a 30-year-old should be. But who set these standards? Where did these ideals come from? When I was 20, my life was an endless treadmill of tasks, hacking away on my laptop as if each keystroke was a hammer shaping my destiny. But now, the treadmill has slowed, and the questions arise—what have I been running toward?
“Why,” I ask myself, “is the life of a 20-something hustler superior to that of a man living simply in Dodome Awiasu?” That man breathes air untainted by industry, consumes food nurtured by Earth, and inhabits a community bound by an ethical compass as ancient as the stars. Is my quality of life—marked by ceaseless hustle—genuinely superior? One could argue about the healthcare amenities my life can afford, but isn’t death the ultimate destination for us all? In the words of Seneca, “We are all chained to fortune: the chain of one is made of gold, and wide, while that of another is short and rusty.”
Now let’s talk about courage or, as I see it now, its doppelganger—cowardice. In my early years, I’d confront anyone, dissecting their logic and challenging their ethos, unless they were an elder, of course. Now, it’s as if I’ve tiptoed across the line dividing audacity from apprehension. Why? Is it because the closer you get to the gears of power, the more you realize how painfully complex and tangled they are? I’ve seen the dark complexities of the world, and they’ve made me question whether speaking out is bravery or foolhardiness. As Friedrich Nietzsche put it, “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.”
You see, I’ve also come to a liberating understanding: human actions, more often than not, are guided by emotions and incentives, not by the lofty ideals of rationalism. In the grand theater of life, we are not the reasoned philosophers we aspire to be but creatures of impulse and desire. This has disabused me of many disappointments I used to feel towards humanity. As Adam Smith eloquently states in ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments,’ “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others.”
So, what lies ahead as I peer into the murky waters of the next decade? While I can’t predict the ebbs and flows of fate, I’m hopeful. I yearn to encounter less of humanity’s darker shades and find more of the hues that make life a vivid tapestry—love, warmth, kindness, and the raw beauty of existence. After all, in the poetic words of Albert Camus, “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
This story isn’t over; life and time will keep writing it.