Let's Not Count the Candles, Please...

I like the fact that Christmas comes almost right after my own special day.

How come when you're eight, you'd give anything to be eighteen? The moment you finally reach the legal age, you wonder how it feels like to be 21, and when you enter the realm of twenty-somethings, you begin to start thinking if you're too old to do some stuff despite your personal aplomb that you're young enough by most standards.

Several years ago, I was a a Barbie doll-toting, cherry lollipop-sucking nine-year-old, and I didn't give a toss about growing old. As the years unfurled, opportunities thrown at my feet and brazenly explored, I saw how the world tried to shun being labeled as, well, 'old.'

Unless you're a piece of furniture, it's a status symbol to be 'antique.' Humans don't take more candles on their birthday cake kindly. They reveal the real numbers and use every credible anti-wrinkle cream built up by bamboozling advertisers.

In the spirit of turning a year older (and indubitably wiser), I wanted to delve deeper into the ancient fear of aging. Then again, I guess the answers will remain varied and inconcrete since age is nothing but a state of mind. And I'm too young to be tackling gerascophobia, so let's scrap that and celebrate my prolific several years on this crazy planet.