I
have always found it confusing why people cut or reduce their ages. This
puzzling situation always makes me ask the question, “What is in an age?” To
me, age is simply indicative of how long something or somebody has lived or existed.
They say, “Different strokes for different folks”. While some people,
particularly people of the western world, will easily disclose their ages, many
others, especially Africans and particularly Nigerians, somewhat shy away from
disclosing their ages. As a matter of fact, they keep their ages so guarded, as
though there was some mysterious or cultural stigma attached to such
disclosure. Personally, I have observed that the very honorific nature of our
cultures in Nigeria and the excessive emphasis our traditions place on seniority
and due accordance of respect to people are largely responsible for people’s
desire to hide their ages; to prevent others from knowing how old they really
are; all in a bid to command the people’s respect.
The
Psalmist says “teach us to number our
days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Ps. 90:12). Of course, the
importance of age cannot be underestimated in the consideration or discussion
of general human progress. For instance, whenever a person records a worthwhile
achievement, one question that is almost always readily asked by people around
is, “how old is he/she”? This question is observably borne out of people’s need
to know how specially to regard the achiever and his/her achievement(s), since,
to humans, recording such worthwhile achievement at an early age is somewhat
unusual. That explains why the English culture (and language too) recognizes
such words as “prodigy”, “whiz kid”, “genius”, “precociousness”, etc. to
acknowledge the uniqueness of age in general human development.
President
Barrack Obama, the president of the United States of America; the Williams Sisters;
the phenomenal Argentine footballer, Lionel Messi; the famed Nigerian Professor
of Literature, Professor Oluwole Soyinka; etc. all have their ages known to the
world. It is not surprising therefore that the press and the general society
celebrate their birthdates for them. All these people have recorded different
degrees of achievements in their various fields of endeavour. It doesn’t really
matter at what age each of them got shone into limelight. All that matters is
that today, they are great achievers, who never let any obstacles hold them
down as they struggled along the grueling path leading them to their current
success destinations. If asked about their pasts, virtually all the great
achievers in the world today would confirm they had chequered pasts; the
journey had never been a bed of roses!
Then, why are you hiding your age from people that will celebrate you?
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