May the 4th (Floor) Be With Us
I don’t like birthdays much, and wonder why we have to extend so much ongoing weight to an annual, limited-significance-if-we-are-being-honest commemoration of birth. Every year, the approach of March makes me nervous — it just feels like being caught in the inevitable, intensifying glare of approaching light that I could definitely do without.
That’s me. I can’t speak for anyone else.
I was born at 2.34 am (according to my birth certificate), and whenever I’m awake at that time of the morning, I think to myself: this is my birth-minute. I could very easily decide to celebrate that, as many times a year as possible, and it would be no less significant than a single traditional annual celebration.
Think about this, also: I turned 5,000 days old on Earth on November 10, 1995; 10,000 days old on July 19, 2009; and will turn 20,000 days old on December 4, 2036.
Wouldn’t it be really cool to reframe our celebrations from “years” to “days”?
That way we shake-up the birthday ‘industry’, and bring some much-needed verve to one of the oldest and staid commemorative systems in the world?
Worth giving serious thought.
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Today, I turned 42. It’s recently occurred to me to bless the world with Tolu’s Law: The more time flies, the faster time flies. As they say, going from 10 to 20 is doubling your life, while from 40 to 50 is but an iceberg-tip in an ocean of lifetime.
Note that this time-flying rule stops applying at a certain point. Life speeds up the more it is lived, and then starts to slow down again, I think. I can easily believe that the decade between 80 and 90 would feel just as slow as the one between birth and 10; as slow as the blood in those ancient veins, pushing tiredly to reach the tips of gnarled fingers and toes.
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So, our twenties are fated to be slow, like you would expect of a car in the hands of a ‘Learner.’ Indeed, I was twenty-something for the longest time.
There was that era when I could apply for all those scholarships and fellowships and prizes for folks under 25. It probably seemed like that would last forever. (On a related note, in May 2018, twenty-five became the age at which one could start running for public office in Nigeria; it used to be 30).
Eventually, I moved on to the next cut-off points, 30 and then 35. Depending on who you ask, 35's where “youth”—starting at 18, or 21, ends. Zero possibility, at that point, of negotiating an extension, not with God, and certainly not with the government.
And then 40. By the time you cross 40 — i.e step into the famed “fourth floor” — you know for sure that youth is well behind you. (I recall realizing, at some point long ago, that by the time the next edition of this decennial List would come out, in 2023, I’d be ineligible, LOL). It’s kind-of downhill (physically speaking) from this Floor. You find deep and satisfying pleasure in looking for the phrase “no age restrictions” when applying for professional opportunities.
In some cases, there are prizes and awards specifically for those who have crossed a certain age—I didn’t have to search far to find a 50 over 50 List (thank you, Forbes, for not letting us down!).
I just checked, it does look like the Forbes Empire starts at ‘30 under 30’, ‘40 under 40’—and then ‘50 over 50’ (I think I saw a ‘10 under 10’, but it looks like Forbes-inspired trolling). Leaving out, if I’m correct, the entire Fourth Floor. An orphaned decade/floor —and I’m forced to wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that it’s also the starting-block decade for midlife crises.
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The forties also stand out for the associated sayings: A Fool at 40 is a Fool Forever (I prefer to sum it up as ‘Forties Foolish, Forever Foolish’), on the one hand, and Life Begins at 40, on the other.
So the idea of forties as crossroads — Life and Foolishness (assuming them to be mutually exclusive) beckoning insistently, with no guidebook or manual for navigation.
Anyways, in case you haven’t figured it out, I entered the Fourth Floor two years ago on this day. Spending today—731 days since then—in the quietest possible circumstances, as I prefer it. And looking forward to when I can once again qualify to feel seen by Forbes Magazine. And also not be defined by anti-foolishness warnings.
Thankfully, unlike the 20s, in this fifth decade (yes, fifth, not fourth, I had to count on my fingers to confirm!) of life, “time” does really fly; in the words of another famous proverb (and beloved songs’/books’ title), “wait[ing] for no one.”
NOTES:
- It’s interesting to note that nowhere in the world did life expectancy hit 40 until about the start of the 20th century — first with the Americas, Europe and Oceania. It’d take another half a century or so for Africa to crawl to the 4th floor.
2. “Adulting” is a term in widespread use today, that I think should only be used in one’s thirties, but that is now being used (laughably) even by people in their twenties. A Google search for “when did adulting become a word”, threw this up right at the top:
We learn every day. (“Aughties”, or “Noughties” are the 2000s, by the way).
“Adulting” reportedly got listed by the Urban Dictionary a decade ago, and has since gone mainstream, in its post-adultery meaning and in all of its “hey, praise me for doing what I have to do” glory.
3. ‘Life Begins At 40’ is the title of a 1930s bestselling American self-help book by philosopher, author and journalism Professor, Walter B. Pitkin. Publishers Weekly is said to have crowned it the best-selling non-fiction book of 1933 in the USA. The phrase has since become a popular title for films, TV and music.
