After the age of 25

A few minutes ago, I read something that I have not been able to get rid of. It was an article related to succumbing to our addictions and how to overcome them. Basically religious stuff. It reads “your ability to control your impulses only matures after the age of 25, since that is when brain development completes. Before this age, it is always going to be difficult to control your impulses”.

If you have read correctly, you’d be able to tell that this writer is not saying we automatically start controlling our impulses or addictions from the age of 25. They just probably stated facts, based on science, maybe. Those few words gave me an insight and more knowledge, basically because I did not know that was true up until a few minutes ago. I didn’t even know it existed.

So, I began to think about people and their struggles. The people who were addicted to drugs and could not stop, no matter how hard they tried. I wonder if their death could have been avoided, if they knew they could wait until the age of 25. I thought about the depressed people who could not stop thinking about ending their lives. Would they have gotten over the obsession to end their lives if they knew they could try living again at 25?

I will be 25 soon, hopefully. I have always thought “I’ll be 25 soon, I’ll be too old to do this and that”. Deep down, I’ve always known, it does not matter whether or not I feel old, or if I achieve everything i want before I clock that age. The truth will always be, I’ll be 25 soon and I’ll be older as the years pass by. Realizing it for the umpteenth time is as good as the first time I understood that. “The age of 25 can be good too and every other age that comes after that can be good too”.

Talking about facts and science stuff that skip out of my ears whenever I hear them, there’s another one I’m yet to get over. A classmate of mine one day, while driving said “Children have to clock the age of 13 and above to be able to control their impulses, a little, to know what is right from wrong”. I have been wondering ever since. “If African parents knew, would they still hit as much? Would they understand? If parents in general knew this, would there be a difference?

A few days ago, my friends and I saw a dead body for the first time. We were in a bus but unexpectedly, it drove slowly, passing the corpse. I got a good view, alright. It was not surprising how people passed over and around him. Going on about their daily activities like it was the norm to find a man covered in blood with flies hovering above and around him. “How disappointing”, I thought. I know why they didn’t do anything. I understood because I also didn’t. And now, I keep wondering “was he at least 25 years old?”