:: A Meaningful 23

I promised myself to write something to celebrate my own birthday. And now it's 8 minutes before midnight. It might bit a lil bit long though. So, bear with me okay :)

Yesterday, I bought this book from the Mr. Old Man at uni, titled Tuesdays With Morrie. Some of you might have heard about this book before. Or read it. This book is an international best seller and over 10 millions copies are sold worldwide. Me, my self was accidently recommended by a stranger in a public tram about 1.5 years ago while I was reading a book from the same author, Five People You Meet In Heaven. FYI, the author is Mitch Albom.

I started read the book yesterday. The story is based on a true story about an old professor who suffered a fatal illness that has no cure or treatment at that time. So this old professor decided to make the most of the rest of his life *which were very little time*. He shared people his life lesson by giving his very last class to his student. The subject called The Meaning of Life. Only one student attended the class. And the student was Mitch.

There are some interesting topics about life this man had shared to his student. About family, money, aging, love, marriage, culture, community, spiritual and some other stuffs. I found this book is very soul soothing. It does sound very jam packed with the philosophy things and deep professor's kind of thought but however the story were all written in simple and beautiful words. Very thoughtful and inspirational, I could say.

I read this book before I went to bed last night. Until finally I reached this part of the book, the seventh Tuesday with Morrie. The topic was about The Fear Of Aging. Mitch, the student, asked Morrie if he were afraid to grow old. Then gracefully, Morrie said, "Mitch, I embrace aging." When Mitch asked him what it means by embracing aging, Morrie explained: "It's very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it."

But if aging were so valuable, why do people always say, "Oh, if I were young again" You never hear people say, "I wish I were sixty-five." That's Mitch's response. Exactly the same thing I'd ask if I were in his shoes. Then Morrie smiled and gracefully answered, "You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven't found meaning. Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to do more, see more. You can't wait until 65."

Then he added, "All younger people should know something. If you're always battling against getting older, you're always going to be unhappy, because it will happen anyhow. And, the fact is, you're going to die eventually.

This part hit me. Really. What he said is true. Albeit I enjoy my life for the past 23 years, I sometimes do feel like if my life were a CD player, I wish I could press the rewind button and live my life back like when I was younger. I've been thinking my life could be much more stress-free and unburdened when I was 18 or 19. But that's not true either. I did have problems too when I was younger and I always wished I could jump to the future and live my life as an adult. I never satisfied. That's the problem.

Today I'm 23. Proudly saying it. I couldn't do anything about it...but to live it to the fullest. I've passed my baby period, my five, ten, fifteen, seventeen, twenty. and yesterday twenty-two. Been there, done that! No need to be envious. But still,,,even though I want to see more, do more, this is the fact: I'm definitely not yet at the stage of saying, "I can't wait until 65"!