Isn't it strange that we celebrate our birthdays thinking that it's the beginning of our nth year ("Welcoming my 30th year with a bang!"), but if you do the math, birthdays actually mark the total number of years that we've had since being born; i.e., I turn 30 tomorrow, which means I have been alive for 30 years already. Technically, I cannot "welcome" my 30th year on my 30th birthday, because I have already welcomed my 30th year on my 29th birthday. My 30th birthday concludes the 30 years that I've walked this earth. (Get it, get it?)
So yeah. I officially get out of Team 20-something tomorrow. I don't ~feel~ anything different (should I, though?) although honestly 15-year-old me would have been shocked for many reasons, both good and bad. :P
Anyway, I am writing this blog as I look back and reminisce how the first three decades of my life has been. If there is one word that will sum up the past 30 years, that word would be: "grateful." I have many, many, many things to be grateful for -- love, success, happiness, and all the people who have helped me achieve everything that I prayed for.
I remember profoundly the time when a good friend of mine, Prim Paypon, spoke in an event about how we must not count our age in terms of calendar years. Rather, we should think of our life in terms of something that he christened as a "Life Number."
How you come up with your ideal Life Number if very simple -- you multiply your age in years by 365, which is the average number of days in a year.
Illustrated, in my case that's 30 x 365 = 10,950. My Life Number is 10,950.
What this means is that ideally, a life well-lived is spent with conscious efforts to make a positive difference and improve other people's lives, one person a day. So if you're a 30-year-old person like myself, ideally you should have made a difference or helped improve the lives of 10,950 people (already).
Already?! Why so many!!! How can that even be possible??? Well, I'm a fan of meeting targets, so hear me out. There are, of course, extravagant ways to make a difference and help improve the lives of people but let's admit, not everyone has the bandwidth to do extraordinary things all the time, every single day.
However, there are also many things that we can do almost effortlessly to meet our target Life Number. It may be through showering people with honest compliments, supporting their new online business, understanding that they need a break from work, patiently guiding someone until they get how something is done, generously tipping, giving them the last slice of pizza, liking a Facebook post to support an online contest where their child is a part of, or even a very simple act of speaking kind words politely with a smile.
Now imagine how this good deed may also inspire them to pay it forward and do good deeds to other people -- now you have people helping you increase your Life Number! You see, given this logic, everyone can easily meet their ideal Life Number if only we make conscious efforts to spread kindness and goodness every day.
I never thought of my life in terms of a Life Number until I got to hear Prim's talk, but ever since I knew about the Life Number concept, I never forgot about it. As for me, having a target Life Number of 10,950 is not bad at all especially during this time that almost everyone is online. That's pretty manageable actually, thinking that maybe if I can do 5 people every day and each of these 5 people do it to another 5 people every day, for 365 days, I would have already achieved my target very easily! (I haven't told you yet, I'm very good with math LOL)
How about you, what's your Life Number? :)