After I crossed the threshold of the 30s, it dawned on me that I should also start adopting a different perspective to life.
No longer am I the adventurous young man who could trod across the heated earth of India or to stuff myself with cheap food from a buffet on a 2-hour stretch. No more would I try cycling overnight along the streets of eastern Singapore, racing the aeroplanes taking off or touching down (and cower in a rented room, on a tatami mat to recover from the physical exhaustion).
I now travel to absorb the atmosphere and culture of a place of my picking, not to touch bases with as many places as I could within the span of daylight (I have never been the clubbing kind). Owning or doing something that everyone else has is no longer the priority criteria for my decisions.
I’m going for the finer things in life.
Is this the “maturing man” mindset? I can’t really say so. Now that I had built a school in a war-torn village in northern Thailand (or volunteered at other villages of the undeveloped worlds), stepped foot on the 3 greatest cities (NYC, Paris and London) of the modern times, found myself a partner, this is just progression into another stage of life that focus on trying more of the stuff I like than trying everything life has to offer; to be a Master than to be a Jack-of-all-trades.
Adopting a different perspective would just be aligning myself to the kind of lifestyle I’m leading.
This journey would start with this blog. Just like the plethora of other blogs I had created in various stages of my life (some of which I would rather not have been created in the first place, but are nonetheless integral to my maturing process), this signals my change in perspective, the move to the start of the middle age that is 轻熟男 (loosely translated as “slightly mature man”).
Welcome myself to the new age.