Next month, I turn 28.
A passage from Haruki Murakami's A Distant Drum has stayed with me.
Getting older was not so frightening. Getting older is not my responsibility. Everyone gets older. That cannot be helped.
What frightened me was reaching a certain point in life and letting something that should have been achieved by then end without being achieved.
That is not something that cannot be helped.
Around this time last year, when I was still 26, my sense of urgency was growing. I had no clear basis for it, but to me, 27 felt like “one particular period,” and I knew I had not achieved anything.
How seriously had I worked at anything? Had I challenged myself? Was I escaping reality? Had I been turning away from the fact that life happens only once?
From the outside, I was in a place that probably looked reasonably steady. But in reality, I had little sense that I was choosing my own life. The more important something was, the more I prioritized standards and expectations handed to me from outside over my own judgment. At some point, I had grown used to accepting that. As a result, I think I had lost my agency.
Like throwing a stone into the dark and hearing nothing come back. Whatever I did, it did not feel real.
A lot happened while I was 27. I had to settle my relationship with my family, and my environment changed. I had to sort through, one by one, both the things around me and the things inside me. I lost more than a little. Still, now I feel more fulfilled than before, and I think I am happy. And though it may be a small thing, I did achieve something that needed to be achieved.