I turned 45 today.
Which is a strange sentence to write because I know what it means, and I am also less sure than I have ever been that I know what it means.
I could memorialize the moment with 45 lessons I have learned, but nobody needs that many bullet points from me.
I could offer 45 bars, but I do not think the people are asking me to rap right now.
I could turn 45 into some kind of word puzzle, numerology, or clever reflection on the number itself.
But instead, I will say this:
This may be my last birthday.
Now, let me be clear before anybody gets concerned.
This is not me suggesting my life is coming to an end.
This is not me prophesying the end of the world.
This is not a dramatic announcement or a coded goodbye.
It is more of a curiosity.
A question I have been sitting with for the past several months.
What is the significance of a birthday?
I understand some of it.
I know what my birthday means to my mother. Every year around this time, she remembers that a very, very large baby came from her body and that this very large baby has grown into the man she experiences today.
That matters.
There is memory there.
There is sacrifice there.
There is story there.
There is the miracle of arrival.
Astrologically, I know there is significance to the day, the season, the month, the hour, where the stars were, where the moon was, how the planets were aligned, and what the sky was holding at the time I took my first breath.
That matters too.
There is mystery there.
There is pattern there.
There is a relationship between the body and the cosmos that I do not fully understand, but I am open enough to honor.
Where I am getting curious is around what it means to be an age.
Not to have lived years.
That feels clear enough.
But to be an age.
To become identified with a number as though the number itself is now responsible for what is possible, appropriate, acceptable, delayed, foolish, wise, beautiful, or out of reach.
Several months ago, I sat with someone who told me a story about a Jamaican man who got into a car accident and lost his memory. Because he lost his memory, he forgot how old he was.
And because he forgot how old he was, he stopped living to age and started living to moment.
I think about that often.
Because people say things to me sometimes like:
“You’re too old to dress like that.”
Or:
“I thought you were much younger because of the way you present yourself.”
Or:
“Was it scary starting your own business at this point in your life?”
Or:
“At your age, there are certain things you need to be thinking about.”
And I understand some of that.
Some of it is practical.
Some of it is biological.
Some of it is connected to the body and the way the body changes.
There are screenings we should get at certain stages of life. There are realities we should be attentive to. There are ways the body asks for different kinds of care as time moves through it.
I am not dismissing that.
The body deserves our attention.
The body deserves our listening.
The body deserves our reverence.
And still, I am curious about what becomes available when age is no longer the primary marker for how we understand our lives.
What happens if I am no longer clocking age?
What happens if “too old” and “too young” are no longer the reference points for what I should or should not do?
What happens if age is no longer the deciding factor for how late I stay up, how long I sleep in, what I wear, what I create, what I listen to, where I go, what I try, what I risk, or what I imagine?
What happens if age is no longer the reason I say no to something that still feels alive in me?
I wonder about that.
Because so much gets organized around age.
What we are supposed to have accomplished by now.
What we are supposed to have outgrown by now.
What we are supposed to be too mature for.
What we are supposed to be too late for.
What we are supposed to be preparing to leave behind.
Even the way we talk about young people often reveals the way we have aged ourselves out of relationship with possibility.
We say “young people” as though we are not still becoming.
As though curiosity belongs to them.
As though risk belongs to them.
As though experimentation belongs to them.
As though wonder belongs to them.
As though some part of us has graduated from becoming and entered a stage of life where the primary task is to comment on what others are doing with theirs.
But what if we do not have to age ourselves out of aliveness?
What if we do not have to leave wonder to the young?
What if the number can be honored without becoming a cage?
A few days ago, I met a flight attendant who has been doing the work for 20 years. Twenty years in the sky. Twenty years of boarding, landing, serving, greeting, repeating, adjusting, and moving through the routines of air travel.
And still, she finds wonder in it.
Sunrises.
Sunsets.
Mountain ranges.
The ice caps over Greenland.
The way the world looks from above when light is doing what only light can do.
She has not let repetition take her wonder.
I sat next to a woman on my way to Athens who was in her 60s and told me she salsa dances everywhere she goes.
Everywhere.
Not as a memory of who she used to be.
Not as a cute thing she used to do when she was younger.
As part of who she is now.
I met an entrepreneur, also in his 60s, who was not building toward retirement, but toward the next creative venture of his life.
Not winding down.
Not disappearing.
Not handing imagination to someone younger.
Still building.
Still imagining.
Still becoming.
And I keep thinking about how many people have creative projects, books, songs, albums, businesses, paintings, films, classes, movements, relationships, journeys, conversations, and new ways of being tucked somewhere inside of them.
Not because those things are gone.
But because some voice has said:
“You’re too old for that now.”
Or:
“That season has passed.”
Or:
“It was your turn. Now it’s somebody else’s.”
But what does that even mean?
If it is still in you, let it be.
Let it breathe.
Let it move.
Let it find its season.
Everything in nature moves at its own pace.
Some trees take years before they bear fruit.
Some flowers bloom quickly.
Some roots grow quietly underground long before anything breaks the surface.
Some birds migrate.
Some stay.
Some rivers rush.
Some carve stone over time.
None of it is less itself because it does not move according to our timeline.
The tree is not ashamed because another tree fruited first.
The river is not embarrassed because it is still carving.
The flower is not apologizing for blooming late.
Nature does not clock years the way we do.
The trees, the birds, the bees, the insects, the air we breathe, the rain that falls, none of it seems to be asking, “Am I too old to become what I am becoming?”
It is all holding moments.
It is all moving through seasons.
It is all responding to what is alive.
So I am curious.
What would it look like to no longer hold years as tightly, and instead hold seasons?
To no longer organize my life around months, but around moments?
To no longer measure the day only by what I accomplished, but by what desire revealed?
To no longer clock minutes as something escaping me, but as invitations lighting the direction of where I am now?
This is not about ignoring time.
It is about refusing to be ruled by a number.
It is about honoring the fact that I have lived 45 years without allowing 45 to become a ceiling.
It is about letting the day be sacred without making the age a sentence.
And maybe this is why this may be my last birthday.
Because maybe after this, I do not need to become 46 in the way I was taught to become an age.
Maybe when July 7 comes around next year, I will not need the day to tell me what I am allowed to be.
Maybe I will still receive the love.
Maybe I will still celebrate the miracle of being alive.
Maybe I will still call my mother and honor the fact that my life began through hers.
Maybe I will still give thanks for the body, the breath, the ancestors, the friendships, the family, the work, the grief, the joy, the mystery, and the mercy that carried me here.
But maybe I will hold the number more lightly.
Maybe I will let the moment matter more than the marker.
Maybe I will let the season tell the truth.
And maybe when July 7 comes around next year, and someone asks me what the day means, I will say:
Wow.
It’s Wednesday.
And I have never had a Wednesday like this before.
That feels like enough.
Actually, it feels like more than enough.
Because what I want in this next season is not to become younger.
And it is not to perform being older.
I want to become more present.
More honest.
More available.
More willing to be surprised.
More willing to follow what is still alive in me.
More willing to stop asking whether I am too old or too young and start asking whether I am being true.
That is the bridge I am standing on today.
Between what has been and what is still becoming.
Between the years I can count and the moments I cannot contain.
Between the person I have been and the person I am still meeting.
So maybe this birthday is not an ending.
Maybe it is a threshold.
Maybe it is not my last birthday because I am done living.
Maybe it is my last birthday because I am done letting age be the primary way I measure aliveness.
Today, I am 45.
I am grateful.
I am here.
And I have never had a day like this before.
Happy Birthday Sean! Thank you for continuing to write and share your thoughts with the world! Your words inspire me!