20

Inside every old person is a young one wondering what happened
— Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures)

I turned 20 recently.

I don’t feel older, of course—who ever feels older on their birthday—but I can feel a Rubicon crossed, deep down; a Rubicon whose effects are yet to bear, effects which I can feel well up, creeping up the edges of my heart; I can see them consume me in recent futures. 20. Two decades. I don’t understand time, not like this, and to be honest I don’t believe anyone who does. Two decades, 20 whole years. The world is unrecognizable, and always is, but even a mere (incomprehensibly large) 20 years forces everything out of its place in some strange game of musical chairs across the globe. Life is in flux; life is Stochastic; life is fleetingly eternal. I wax so, even so young, because I know that I’ll probably always feel the same age. But 20 is foreboding: 20 is a watershed year; 20 is a large change; 20 is one second closer to being swallowed up by this latent torrent. I know this isn’t an unique experience by any means, but that is irrelevant. I am writing my experience. Just know that I know that I’m not unveiling any secrets of the world as I open up new section of the world I see through the keyholes of my own eyes, my own limbs, my own life.

I wonder when I’ll stop feeling this not-child-not-adult sensation, and whenever I question it I usually resolve it to a simple time: Never. Semper iuvenis; semper senex. Always young; always old. I’m afraid of adulthood and all that it entails, and I envy, detest, and distrust the people my age who move legally as autonomous adults but behave practically like children. It seems so free. The Future fetters, unasked and unassuming it has sneaked up behind me and surprise! it reveals itself with a bang as both Past and Present—all I can do is watch, jaw agape, as I speed past highway markers demarcating distances which I had only dreamed of 10 short years ago. 20 and 70 feel equally far away when I was 10; 30 and 70 feel equally far away as I’m 20. It is too close for comfort, the Future, breathing down my neck like people crammed tightly in long amusement park queues, waiting for whatever is in store in front of them—you can see it, you can see people go on it, you can hear them recount their adventures and unfounded worries and unforeseen errors but unfortunately (or, I’d posit, fortunately) you can crane your neck all you want but you can’t feel anything. Once you hit the top of the queue, you and your merry band of hooligans beside you—people you’ve kept time with, but also all those you haven’t kept in touch with—you get to sit and get a firsthand view.

Ride after ride after ride I wait and every time nothing goes as planned; no explanations ever do justice; no advice was all-encompassing (few advices were worth listening to, though most are worth learning from); and now I have crossed into the double decades club, another motley crew created for the job, and for the first time I’m starting to get nervous. This coaster’s path doesn’t seem nearly as clear. This coaster—Quantum Coaster, they call it, for everything must be Quantum if there is but the slightest bit of uncertainty—how else could we convey that?—this Coaster is higher and faster and more divergent than the rest. High entropy, to continue with borrowed (or stolen and mangled) Physics terms. I’m scared, and I think I have every right to be. What am I getting into? Where is the waiver, the instruction manual, the expert NPC to lead you through this patch of dark forest? Where is my Gandalf, my Moiraine, my Obi-Wan or Athena or Wotton or Jeeves—where is the path I must take, ideally one trodden on already by someone wiser, smarter, more meticulous and than me? checked for traps and shortcuts so I may enjoy the spoils of someone else’s sweet sweat? I know, in the deepest pits of my heart, that nobody can lead you through your life, but I hope, still, for some pertinent advices to avoid pitfalls. This is not an existential crisis, though this does relate, naturally, to my existence; neither is it a matter of exigence. A sharp ache which sharply shifts to a dull one, chewing at you subtly until you turn to face it. You grow old slowly, till it happens all it once—or so it seems—so I’m not worried about oldness as much as I am anxiously wary of uneven branching paths.

The whole idea, i.e. getting old, this inevitable underground paradigm shift, this autobiographical bildungsroman, has been gnawing at me since I’ve started my applications to graduate school. I’m ready to sign off another half-decade or so of my life to the superlative devotion to Statistics and I’m doing it quite casually; naturally, as if it is the only option available to me. That, it is not, though I am certain this path I’m walking toward is the best, for me. But it is still somewhat scary. It is most likely that I will live alone, far away—really for the first time, officially. And I’m going to be a graduate student: independent, truly, to the n-th degree. I could go anywhere—West, East, Midwest, East Coast, West Coast—I could go anywhere. I could be on the other side of the globe, starting a difficult five years in a brand new place where I don’t know anyone and don’t know much about everything, really. Looking at these university names in my spreadsheet which I abhor, I don’t feel or see anything. They’re all just programs—but some would probably lead me to radically different life-experiences—but they’re all just degrees on a page. Meaningless. I care, yes, but I can’t know anything and that scares me. I am a statistician, my whole job is to work with (model, quantify, reduce) uncertainty, but that doesn’t make it any less scary, especially when it is directly applied to me. Of course, the deepest fear is that I don’t even get a chance to pick.

Twenty. What good is that? I feel practically no different or wiser than two, or twelve, or perhaps more realistically, fourteen or sixteen or eighteen. They’re all the same: too young; too old. Whence this age? Where was the time stolen? Where can I reclaim it? I am not yet awash with this rumbling change I can feel, but I can feel it; will it be jostled by a flight to a graduate program? on a random Tuesday? or is this tsunami going to peter out and pitter-patter, splashing me, Theseus, constantly? I am awaiting with bated breath, but a part of me is secretly hopeful and sometimes it crushes the anxiety—I wait in the small of my heart for that wondrous dip, the highlight of a rollercoaster, a plunge into the unknown: diving for pearls in the apartment’s sheltered pool. I am afraid, and that keeps me cautious. I am hopeful, and that keeps me brave. I am twenty, and that keeps me young/old.