Today, I turn 32!

Honestly, I don’t have any issues when it comes to revealing my age. Yes, I do join the “let’s keep our age a secret” jokes with batchmates. But truth is I don’t really mind getting older.

What I do fear is getting older…ungracefully! While we can purchase all the age defying face masks and eye creams offered in the market today, I believe there’s really no way of defying ageing! And we actually have no option when it comes to getting old. What we do have options for is how to approach it. We either age awkwardly or Age Gracefully. It’s a choice we need to make every time we blow another set of birthday candles and every time we feel like “adulting” is taking a toll on us.

I’m a Young parent and wife, and honestly, this new chapter in my life still feels surreal until today. Just three years ago, I was a carefree, young, single woman. I traveled when I wanted to, stayed til 10 in the morning on the bed during weekends and went for a whole body Siatsu massage every other week.

Fast forward to today, it’s suddenly not easy and automatic to get the “me” time I feel I deserve. With a corporate job or a business, a household to manage, a child to take care of, a husband to cherish, family relationships to embrace, a regular household help that we can never find, a passion to pursue, a dream to chase, an advocacy to promote, a physical beauty to nourish and an overall personal wellness to take care of (Can you add more to the list, please?), even taking a long shower is now a luxury I thank God for everyday. No wonder the millennial carefree young adult in me is rejecting adulting or ageing, and everything that has to do with it.

And so we cry with our former YOLO buddies. “Why is adulting so hard?” Sob, sob. Or “I knew it wasn’t easy, but noone ever said it’s this difficult!” Come on, let’s treat ourselves with a cup of our favorite frap with whipped cream on top.

Plus, adulting paints a distracting picture for many of us. Fine lines and wrinkles, bulging tummy, gray hair, CS scars, stretchmarks, eye bags are all part of it, and so we try to conceal each one with good make-up or a good Instagram filter.

Add to that drama is the fear of the unknown. Adulting includes a big collection of monsters that may cause us anxiety, worries, fear, distractions, migraine, and perhaps, a gastroesophageal reflux disease.

We are so concerned about so many things — our future, our health, our business, our relationships, our family, our life. That’s why there’s a pressure within to work hard, succeed, stay fit, look fab, remain strong and young and pretty. The clock is ticking. We’re not getting any younger. It’s as if ageing is robbing the best of us.

But if you’ll think about it, it isn’t ageing or adulting that gets the best of us. It’s the negative way we view ageing and the many things that go with it that brings the worst in us. Our pessimistic manner of viewing growing old is what robs us of the joy and peace that we should actually be enjoying each fleeting moment of our life.

We have an option to age gracefully. It doesn’t mean remaining flawless through the years or achieving every single ounce of success before we reach 40.

For me, ageing gracefully means embracing adulthood with all joy and serenity. It means taking care of and loving sincerely our physical beauty despite the wrinkles, the flabs or the newfound fondness for “lola” oils. It also means giving our best in all our responsibilities at work, in our families, in our business, in our personal life. It means juggling every ball of responsibility in our life without losing the balance, the poise, the gracefulness. It means being so busy outside yet not losing the peace within.

And that is what I’m wishing for on my 32nd birthday. I pray that God will give me (and other young parents like me) the grace to age gracefully because we all know, it ain’t easy.