by minkofhope

Created on: December 30, 2008

The months and weeks leading up to my thirtieth birthday were the worst! I had a long to to list of things I had always wanted to accomplish before I reached the ripe old age of thirty, but somehow I reached thirty before I could complete almost everything on my list. I felt devastated having thought when I was younger that I would never be that old! I remember being maybe six or seven and thinking one of my neighbors who was eighteen was really old...but once I reached eighteen, I saw it wasn't old. But when you're young (not even into an age that has double digits), anything past sixteen (when you'll FINALLY be able to drive and have some freedom) seems old.

However, as I grew up, I slowly realized we all age and that in reality, age really is just a number. But just because it's a number does not mean it signifies anything less to society. Numbers are important to society for so many reasons - your income, your bills, your kids, how many years you've been involved with someone, your age. These numbers, though just numbers that are insignificant without their meanings behind them, represent status. And status is what many of us aim for! We all want some type of status in society whether it's to be viewed as younger than we are because that will make us feel younger (and who doesn't want to feel younger and relive childhood where our only true concerns were that our best friend was mad at us for not being able to make it to their slumber party) or it's our income which also represents status. As I'm writing this, I'm realizing it's not necessarily about the numbers that affect us so much as we all grow older, it's about our status in society and how we are viewed. If you don't look a certain way or make less money than others think you should, you're viewed as less than ideal in society's eyes. In reality, all we are competing for is acceptance, but acceptance into what? Society? Shouldn't we all be able to say and be our ages without being seen as less than ideal in society's eyes? Any time I tell people I'm in my thirties, I automatically receive a look of shock and a response of "You don't look like you're in your thirties!" which is a great compliment to hear, yet my question is, who really knows what someone in their thirties should look like? I was never given the list of what characteristics to search for visually to determine a person's age. Maybe since I look young somehow society has accepted me without any questions, yet shouldn't I be accepted whether

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