How old is 28 years old?

 

It is obviously not a Friday and you are probably surprised by the fact that you got the link to this article on the day. You did not make a mistake clicking this link so keep reading.

On a Saturday like this one in the year 1993, a baby boy was born to my parents. That would be me. My birthday happens to come on one busy Saturday this week and I am wondering if I will have the opportunity to celebrate it well. I will try, though.

I have been struggling with the question of how old I am. Let me explain. If you do simple mathematics, the fact that I was born on Saturday, May 1 in 1993 places my age at exactly 28 years. I know that, just like 99 percent of the people reading this. What I do not know is how old a 28-year-old Malawian boy is. And yes, I said boy because I do not like the whole idea of referring to a person under the age of 35 as a man.

One may wonder as to why I am not satisfied by the knowledge of my numerical age. My reasoning has been shaped by one Dave Chappelle who in the time of the R Kelly scandals wondered how old a 15-year old was. This question was asked on the background of the allegations that R Kelly had emptied his bladder onto a 15-year old girl who hardly moved a muscle to avoid the shower. Dave Chappelle’s conclusion? A person cannot be as smart as they can get at the age of 15 but at 15 one needs to be able to make basic decisions on whether someone can pee on them or not. If you can tolerate a few swear words, you can watch the whole story in Chappelle’s standup comedy special titled For What Its Worth.

The comedy from which I borrowed this weird line of reasoning was done about 20 years ago and I got to watch it years back. Nonetheless, I have always wondered as to what Mr Chappelle would have said about the age 28. He did not say anything, though, so I thought I could cut the laziness and do it myself. Just thinking about it would now have been difficult so I have taken the liberty to open the vent and let you peep through what is going on in my mind as a reflect on this birthday. And yes, I said reflect because I am not celebrating this one.

When it comes to the question of how old someone is, we turn to the numbers as a measure. The first thing that comes to somebody’s mind when they are asked as to how old they are is the numerical age since that is what the teachers have been telling way before we could understand the concept of age enough to start hiding or lying about our age. Numerical age sense but ever since I got called for a job interview for a job I had applied with no birth date on my CV and no age in my application letter, I have been wondering as to whether the numbers are more important when compared to what one has achieved.

Here is the other side of it. Others have measured age by one’s ability and achievements. This is where the concept of maturity comes into place. There are some people who have grown through the easiest situations and those tend to “grow slowly. One the opposite end is the group of those who get to have difficult responsibilities from early on. This bunch tends to grow and mature faster and their decision making tends to be very different from those who grew up with a silver spoon. This might be a divisive opinion that some may not agree with but given the dichotomy of whether to agree or disagree with it, I would lean towards agreeing. I am not saying that growing up privileged is the wrong thing or undesirable. After all, when it comes to things of having it easy and having it tough, I strongly believe that it goes beyond money.

In one twitter thread I saw, people were mentioning their numerical ages and talking about their life situations. Some were single parents to more than one child and struggling to make ends meet at 26. Others were college graduates of 5 years who were struggling to find employment at 25. Interestingly enough, one person posted about how he was a successful business man and struggling to find love at the age of 35. Each of those struggles has a way of bringing a certain level of growth when handled appropriately. In a sense, however, the maturity scale fails to cover some unusual being whose decision making and execution abilities may be hard to fit on a conventional scale.

In medical circles, we have what we call developmental milestones. The concept of milestones is popular among pediatricians who assess whether a child is on the right track depending on whether they are able to perform certain tasks by a certain age. These may range from speech to motor functionality i.e. sitting, crawling, standing or walking. If a child is not able to do one of those particular things by a certain age, they are labelled as having developmental delay. This then, puts the numerical age in context and in as much as it may not have the same usefulness it has in babies, I would like to borrow the concept and use it to check how old I am. That, of course comes with its own challenges. I will explain.

The first problem is that it is difficult to define what an adult should do by a particular age. People who go on setting benchmarks on by what age one should have achieved a certain milestone are one of the causes of the surging mental health issues we have on God’s green earth. Think of it. We have set expected ages at which people should finish the different levels of education. Then in the tricky job market we have in this country, we have gone on to set an age at which graduates should find jobs and another one by which they should have moved out of their guardians’. You know the next one. Marriage. At 28, I am way past my marriage age according to some and I am just about to get there according to some. I feel for the girl children who were born before and in the same year as me because the situation is even tougher for them.

The second problem with this system is that people have this tendency of hinging their success to comparisons with what others have achieved. I fell prey to this despite being given the antidote to the same by my secondary school Additional Mathematics teacher back in 2009 (story for another day). Having graduated from secondary school, egos led me to picking medicine over other programmes of study.  That meant that I had to be in the oven of college for 6 years while the less intelligent Nyembezi went on to study agribusiness management at Bunda. By the time I was in my 5^th year in college, he dropped by driving a Toyota Corolla Axio from his workplace. He bought us meals and airtime and gave me a bit of pocket money. I wanted to be like him at that time. I just wanted to be done with school, because being about the same age as him, I thought I was in some sort of developmental delay by being in college. Stretch your imagination and think about how life feels for the 30-year-old girl who has been in 5 bridal parties and still do not have a loved one. Add the social media to this and you get a confused generation. The picture-perfect lives that people are living out there can depress you from thinking that your age mates are doing way better than you are. In the case of choosing whether to be inspired or intimidated, many choose the latter and subsequently add depression to it.

We are at a point where the numerical age is not helping and maturity isn’t doing much. Creating a composite method from the two is also kind of difficult so I am no closer to finding out what being 28 years old should mean to me. For the answer, I might have to turn to Henry Kachaje.

Back in 2013, I happened to attend one of those motivational seminars that Mr Kachaje had organized. This seminar was held at Mount Soche Hotel and had about 15 participants. As a part of the seminar, each participant was given a 22-page planner to write about how they envisioned their life 10 years from the say of the seminar. Now 22 pages was a long shot and one can imagine the details one had to fill as responses to the leading questions.

There were questions on bank account whose responses I cannot remember, but I am pretty sure that my bank balance is far from what I wrote in there. On career, I wrote that by 2023 I will be a licensed oncologist and if you know what I do now, you know how that is going. Church? I wrote that I would be an active member of the church possibly having an active post within my small church community. I am very active, but it will take a miracle for me to get where I thought I will be at age 30. My favorite? There was a bit about family in which I wrote that by the age 30 I will be married with two children. I am 28 now and plans of getting married are as far from me as they can be for a guy my age. The career and family goals were written from a point of naivety and I have learnt to forgive myself for painting such a picture.

There we are then. Even when you tie your age assessment to personal expectations, you may end up missing it. I am probably one of the few weirdos who has this problem, but here I am knowing that I am 28 without really knowing how old 28 is. There is one thing that I know for sure, though. Mine has been a life well lived. For a person my age, I think I have done it all and that is something to be celebrated. I have been a church leader and I have blacked out after taking too much whiskey. I have been heartbroken and I have broken hearts. I have been involved in charities and I have chopped money I was not supposed to chop. I have clapped hands at idiots and sworn at people I shouldn’t have. I have written articles on this blog, the 248^th of which you are now finishing. I have done weed. I have sung in a church choir. I have had an impact on lives on both extreme ends. I may not be proud of half the things I have done but I feel like mine is a life well lived. And here is to 28. Moving on, it will be time to do more good and less of the bad.

There we are, then. There is the good and there is the bad but then there is my life. Going back to the issue of age, writing this has led me to one conclusion. Using milestones may not be the best way to check how old one is. Perhaps knowing how old a person is should be about what they have been through and what they have learnt from it. I hope I have learnt enough from my 28 years. With all these thoughts, I doubt I will be doing any celebrating today. One part of me feels like I have learnt enough from my highs and lows and the other feels like I have not. When I look at both sides of that coin, I am finding it hard to get the energy for celebrating this birthday. 

Summary of the article? Your age is a product of how much you have learnt from the life you have lived. 

Have a good day.