Despite his friends’ anxieties, he knew he would love being thirty, for the very reason that they hated it: because it was an age of undeniable adulthood. When he was growing up, thirty had been a far-off, unimaginable age. He clearly remembered being a very young boy—this was when he lived in the monastery—and asking Brother Michael, who liked to tell him of the travels he had taken in his other life, when he too might be able to travel.
“When you’re older,”
“When? Next year?”
“Many years, when you’re older. When you’re thirty.” And now, in just a few weeks, he would be.

📚A Little Life