Two suns ago, I, Rudya (by taken name), {Aditya, (which means sun), by given name}, completed 40 revolutions around the sun, since my mother’s son was born on a sunny afternoon.

For a couple of moons before this momentous day, I’ve been wondering how I feel about hitting this somewhat scary milestone. And I think I’ll need a couple of more moons to finally understand how I feel about it.

As of now, I don’t think I feel anything. I’m definitely not sad. But I’m not happy either. I don’t feel stressed about getting old, but I also can’t avoid the realization that I’m certainly over the hill now. Maybe I suffer from anhedonia. Or maybe I feel two things on opposite sides with equal intensity and they just cancel each other out. Leaving me shrugging my shoulders and saying, “I dunno!” when someone asks me how I feel about turning 40.

What I do know is that there is no point in dwelling too much on numbers and social expectations attached to those numbers, because both numbers and social expectations are man made constructs that only exist in our heads. Life is happening right now. It has been happening right now for 40 years as far as I can tell. I wasn’t alive before then so I can’t vouch for that time period. And life will keep happening in the right now for as long as I’m alive. I can’t be sure what will happen after I’m gone, but luckily I don’t care too much about that time period either.

Right now, all I can do is to live the way I want to live, one day at a time. Call me old fashioned but I think one should live their life the way they want to live it. Everything else is just details.