"I wish I was that young again!"

I have a lot of friends who are older than myself. Predominantly in their 30's. When I mention the fact that I am 23 they say "you have plenty of time to figure out what you want to do. I wish I was that young again!"

While comments like these temporarily alleviate of my fears of getting older, and not having ever found the perfect career, life, or love, I still wonder why people that are only ten or so years older than myself, who are in a comfortable career, relationship and position in life are making statements that warrant assumptions that they would take it all away to merely be younger.

If only they remembered what it was like to be 23. Little sense of certainty about the future, and the lacking wealth of knowledge that you will acquire on your way to your 30's.

My Mother once told me that the best years of her life were in her 30's. I've never asked her what her 20's were like. She married young (in fact she had been married 3 years by the age I am now) so I'm guessing that I couldn't really make a comparison between the two of our lives anyway.

The fact that my Mother told me that her 30's were the best, has always stuck in my mind. I think some where along the line, like a game of bad chinese whispers, I misinterpreted this statement as "The 20's will be a long, hard, battle"

While I'm only in my 4th year of my 20's, I've awoken to the fact that the larger parts of life, the things with real responsibilities and consequences replace the little things that used to matter, that used to upset or frustrate me, but that I now realise were insignificant in the scheme of things.

Why is it that as youngsters we always used to drop the toast on the ground (buttered side down of course), we always had scabby knees, got rocks stuck in our shoes, got blood noses, had untied laces, and stepping in dog poo seemed to be an unavoidable occurrence. Why did these things seem to happen almost on a daily basis, yet if any were to happen now it would be a strangely rare event.

What about all of the fun things we used to do, like mixing all the shampoos, body washes, soaps and shaving foam together in one concoction whilst in the bath, putting your head underwater, following an ants trail and looking for four leaf clovers. Why do we not do these things anymore? Where would we even begin to find the time?!

Being younger is to some advantage in figuring out our options, and the direction we want our lives to go. But the sense of responsibility replaced the ability to be completely carefree as soon as we moved out of home. As adults, we sometimes long to be carefree, but we know in doing so it wouldn't be practical as we need to work to make money for rent and pay the bills. In this instance you could say that our lives begin to cease at 20 as much as they do at 30!

Our adult lives do have similarities to our youngster days, for example, by following other species (i.e. men/women!), looking for the perfect career, relationship, life, in lieu of following an ants trails, or looking for four leaf clovers. Same concept, but with complete difference of importance and relevance to our corresponding ages.

Whilst we can search all we like for our career, love and sense of completeness, as an adult in our 20's hopefully we realise by now that preparation pays off more than luck. Finding a four leaf clover is sheer luck. We had the time to spend hours searching for one when we had no responsibility or time concerns. If we wanted to find a four leaf clover now, I would say that half of us wouldn't even bother, and the other half would pay somebody to look for them! It seems nothing in our adult lives appears by sheer luck. A philosopher named Seneca, once said that "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

So for now in our 20's, I guess all we can do is prepare for the years ahead and wait for the right opportunities to arise. Then I am certain, that the 30's will be the luckiest decade of our lives, and hopefully we won't be wishing that we were younger, like my superiorly aged friends!