Getting old isn't anything new. Everyone does it and, technically speaking, we all do it at the same time, at the same rate. The differences exist in how each person handles this unavoidable fact. Well, there is one way to avoid it, but we won't go down that path. We've just assigned so much value to how long we've been alive and conveniently have units of measure to help us out with the messy details. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia.

Age really is just a number, but so is your blood pressure, and your salary and your grade in pre-algebra all those months/years/decades ago. Numbers matter. Numbers represent so many different things that represent so much of our lives. Phone numbers, street numbers, social security numbers. Age matters as well. Age dictates when you can drive, vote, drink, smoke, gamble, rent a car, retire.

Ok, now that that is all out of the way, the analysis. Hitting a "milestone" age is always a big deal as you gradually get older. When you're 10, you can't wait to be 16, when you're 16, it's 18. When you're 18, it's 21. When you're 21, your perspective starts to change a bit (unless you've always dreamed of the aforementioned ability to rent a car). Those subsequent years just sort of blur together and are largely indistinguishable. Somewhere in there you might earn a degree, fall in love, take a trip or something else equally significant, but those things are not directly linked to your age.

As the years pass, life becomes less about reaching a certain age so you can do something (like drive, drink, vote) and more about doing things before you reach a certain age (like graduate, get married, have kids, buy a house, make a million dollars). Somehow miraculously, the same 365 days that seemed to never elapse as a kid, can't go slow enough as an adult. People start hearing "clocks ticking" and making marriage pacts with childhood friends. Older relatives' eyebrows start raising and stress starts growing. Every deficiency becomes a priority and every goal becomes that much more past due.

So, upon reaching 30, is there a list of accomplishments that should be marked off? If so, what are they? Are they the same for everyone? Does it really matter? Why do you care what someone else's list looks like? It seems like people have decided the only way to feel better about their own age is to compare themselves with other people at that age, be it past or present. A 30-year old might compare themselves to another 30-year old and see who "wins", or maybe to a 40-year old and see if they're "ahead of the pace", or even to a 20-year old just to make sure they've put enough distance between themselves and the next generation.

Why bother? Every age has advantages and disadvantages. The flip-side of feeling "old" is that at least you've lived to feel old in the first place. If you were still "young", you wouldn't necessarily have that guaranteed. You've survived, you've risen to face a lot of days and lived to tell the tale. Even if your tale won't sell many books, magazines of movie tickets, it's still an accomplishment in itself.