Birthday Blues...

Birthday blues? I have never experienced them. And this isn’t arrogance. I have just never set goals for myself with the pressure of age.

I would want to join the world and say that age is just a number, but I do not exactly believe that. I think age matters. It marks growth. It changes you. What I do not believe is that it should become a deadline.

My early 20s were just a few years ago and I think of some choices I made then. While I do not exactly regret them, I know for certain that I wouldn’t be making those choices today. This is because I have grown. This is how I feel about turning a new age: a heart full of gratitude for the growth, for the experiences I have lived through that, whether good or bad, are responsible for the Dika I have become.

However, I would be dishonest if I pretended I do not have a good life. My heart is at peace. I am not depressed. I am not in debt. I have the warmth of family and friends. I have also made major career milestones over the past few years. So I look forward to a new age, to new years, with anticipation for what they will bring.

Do not get me wrong. There are many things that I thought I would have by today that I am nowhere close to getting. And it cuts across my personal life, my work life and even my finances. There are days I wake up so anxious about my future. So unsure. So full of doubt.

But what has helped me survive the anxiety and the pressure is pacing myself. What is that saying about how things compound?

A fine example is filmmaking. I know I cannot afford to make a feature film yet, but I could pull together the resources for a short film, so I focused on doing just that. And that commitment has gradually started to open doors that make a feature film feel possible in the foreseeable future.

A friend once encouraged me to make my first feature film before the age of 25. I am 27 today and I am so glad I didn’t. I never even felt any pressure from that advice. It mattered not to me. And there’s no part of me that wishes I had done it. In fact, knowing what I know today, if a jinn had wanted to grant me that wish, I would reject it.

Growing older is fine. We live in a world that wants us to believe it is not. I am tired of seeing tweets that fearmonger about age. I saw one today about how the ages of 27 to 32 are going to be some of the hardest years of your life. I saw similar tweets about age 23 when I was 23 and age 25 when I was 25. All bullshit.

I have been living in this world long enough to know that every age comes with its own peculiar challenges. I navigated them then and I will navigate them now. I am quite familiar with growing older. I know that I will be fine.

I also hate TikTok and Instagram trends, however funny, about people mourning a new age by taking a decade off their birthday cake before someone comes along to hit them and readjust the numbers. On a subconscious level, I think it influences how we feel about growing older. Many of us are really young, in our 20s and 30s, yet we are already being taught to dread ageing.

I joined in on the joke two days ago when my friend Ugochukwu sent me birthday wishes. He joked about 30 creeping up and maybe because of the use of that verb and its connotation, I responded:

“don’t scare me, yo!” 😭

“30 ain’t shit. You get a ‘get-married’ age limit?”

“nope!”

“So it don’t matter”

“yes! thank you!”

I loved road trips growing up. Getting on those long bus rides from the North to the South East was a highlight of my childhood. I loved those journeys. Looking out the window. Driving past cities, small towns and communities. Hills. Vegetation.

I think of life as a journey like that and I am committed to enjoying the trip. I am looking forward to what the future holds. And I cannot get to the future without getting older. So I am thankful for every day I get to live.

Happy birthday,

Dika