Now that my 30th birthday is less than two months away and the depressing realization that I have still to nail down exactly, what “it” is that I’m doing with my life is setting in, I hear the same phrase with increasing regularity. From consoling family members to encouraging friends, everyone wants me to know that “30 Is The New 20.” That’s a nice thought. It means I shouldn’t feel so much pressure or disappointment in the fact that I’m not “on my way” just yet (presumably towards whatever “It” is.)I can relax because there is a large body of thirty-somethings right now that have no idea yet what they want to be when they grow up. So, we thirty-somethings have collectively decided to move the starting line past which “Grown Up” officially begins. After all, it’s our age group! We can do whatever we want with it! All you baby-boomers can just keep your disgust to yourself.

“Thank you for calling tech support. I’m going to be here when I’m forty aren’t I?”

Now that thirty IS the new twenty, hopefully this also means my life expectancy has also gone up by ten as well. Death realizes that 30 is the new 20 too . . . right?

Why am I so bothered? Well, regardless of the fact that I haven’t found “it” yet, I can feel with certainty that “it” is out there. Destiny. She’s a lover I haven’t seen in the flesh yet; I can’t tell you exactly what she looks like but I can still describe her to you. She’s important. She valuable. She’s a contribution to everyone around her. She might have made a lot of money but that isn’t want matters to her. What is important to her is waking up every morning and knowing she’s making the greatest contribution she can, the best way she knows how, according to her principles. How do I know that destiny is out there? Well I don’t for certain, but I have a strong feeling because of the cavernous void her absence from my present life has created.

And by destiny I don’t mean fame. I think fame seems, at least in part, a matter of coincidence, which is why I’m seldom star-struck. When I was a teenager, Mike Tyson bought every seat in the theater I worked at for a showing of Saving Private Ryan. He watched the movie with two friends and all the employees took turns checking out the back of their heads from the projectionist’s window. I was tearing tickets and, as he walked by me after the film flanked by these two huge men, the only thing that occurred to me was,  “Hunh…he’s kinda short.”

This has proven true in nearly every case except for one.

I had been working for a month in San Francisco as IT support for a television station. At the end of that first month, the company had it’s anniversary party on a yacht called the “San Francisco Spirit.” Three floors, 4 bars, and several loops around San Francisco Bay – it was a tradition that a few of my fellow IT members referred to reverentially as, “The Booze Cruise.” I still had yet to make even a proximity friend with anyone in the company and I was apprehensive about the party. All day I had been fighting with a light case of social anxiety. I’m not one for parties and usually will only show up out of politeness to the host, making a fast exit in the first hour or two. The thought of being trapped on the boat for the duration of one had my stomach twisting lightly, hardly soothed by the prospect of, “meeting new people.”

It was a typical fall afternoon in San Francisco and when we headed out on the water the low clouds were moving in quickly. I was standing on the upper deck of the Spirit finishing the first of a family of drinks I would go through that evening. I downed the last swallow and turned to head towards the bar. That was when I saw Al Gore standing amongst a group of people from the television station, smiling and posing for pictures with them, the remaining tufts of his hair blowing around in the Bay air. I felt the blood drain from my extremities, my heart start hammering, and my stomach began oceanic gyrations of it’s own.

I ducked down the stairs away from him as quickly as I could and found the bar on the second floor. The bartender refilled my drink while I babbled helplessly into my cell phone at some close friends about how Al Gore was on a boat I was going to be on for the next two hours. After I was refilled I spent the next 30 minutes circling the upper deck where he was, like a vulture. I was trying to figure out why I was so damned star struck. After all I’m ashamed to admit it but it takes all the energy I can muster to care about and follow politics, even in an election year.

Writing this now, I think I understand more clearly.

Whatever you think of his politics – whether you agree with him or not, Al is a man who, at least in appearance, has found Destiny. He obviously has a set of principles that he lives by and they govern his pursuits. He has found his meaning but not only that, it has rippled beyond the limits most people never see their whole lives. He represented everything to me that I’d come to California seeking and I wanted to tell him my whole story and share with him how passionate I was about… something… I just hadn’t figured out exactly what it was yet. Lost in the midst of these thoughts, I had completely stopped paying attention to where I was standing, I didn’t realize that I was now within a few feet of Al staring at his shoes. He however did notice and, apparently used to awkward introductions from perfect strangers, walked right up to me.

“Hello there,” he said.

“I uh…I…hi there hi. I’m Ian.”

He smiled, “I know. I’ve seen you around the building. How’re you doing?” he asked.

I gulped, honestly having no idea how exactly I was doing but I was pretty sure the boat was sinking from under me. Instead of answering his question I gestured to the clouds out on the water, now shrouding the distant hills. “Wow this is uh…this is amazing. Beautiful I’m so…uh…I’m so. Wow.”

Al raised an eyebrow at me, probably wondering how I’d managed to get drunk ten minutes into our voyage.

I reached desperately. “I mean uhh… I mean I’m from some podunk little town and this is just…this is really amazing to me.”

Al smiled, “Oh really? Where are you from Ian?” A quick search of Wikipedia right now tells me Al Gore spent much of his childhood growing up in Carthage, Tennessee, population 1700.

“Uhm..” I swallowed. “Duh… D… Denver.” That’s Denver, Colorado. Population at last count 598, 707.

Al Gore, again, looked confused. “I’d hardly call Denver a podunk little town.”

“NO I uh. NO I guess not. Just you know… compared to this boat.”

The two of us stood in silence together another 20 seconds, both wondering what I’d just meant by that, before Al cleared his throat very graciously and said, “Well uhm… I hope you enjoy the party.”

“Oh you TOO!” I shouted, my arms flying up anxiously and nearly tossing my Jack and Coke across his jacket. He smiled and backed away slowly.

I spent most of the rest of the evening at either the uncrowded bow or the stern of the boat, avoiding any possible area I thought he might be.  For the next two hours those two minutes next to him played through my mind in a loop. I wondered shamefully if Destiny had been standing there with us, rolling her eyes at me while I struggled to form complete sentences. I wondered how many normies like myself wondered that after meeting a celebrity. I wondered how many normies a celebrity meets daily, who look to them the way I did – their every gesture begging that the celebrity use their mutant super-power to validate and fulfill the normies very existence. How must the celebrity feel seeing that question in the normies eyes, “What must it feel like to be complete?”

And somewhere in the process of wonder, I lost track of how many drinks I’d had.

The night wore on, sometime that evening the Captain announcing over the p.a. that we were making our last loop around the Bay. I started to make my way to the main deck, hoping to be first up the gangplank when they let us off. The main deck was the largest part of the boat and was absolutely packed with people. The temperature was a good 20 degrees higher than any other part of the boat. I was doing my best to maneuver through the crowd when I ran into my boss Jessie. Jessie’s face was completely aglow. This was a striking thing because he bic’d his head and from the crown of his head to where his neck disappeared into his shirt he was beet red.

“HEY man! How’re you enjoying the party!?!”

“Oh…it’s all rig..it’s good. It’s good. Thanks man.”

“Did you get a picture with Al yet!?”

I shook my head, “No that’s ok. I think I have a memory that’ll last without it.”

Jessie caught no and nothing else because he started in the opposite direction before I’d finished my sentence, pulling me through the crowd of people that had jammed the main deck. Before I knew it I was once again standing in front of Al Gore. VERY in front of Al Gore. In order to hear anything in the crowd we needed to stand within inches of each other. By this point in the evening Al’s collar was undone, his hair completely disheveled, and his face flush and sweating from the heat of the crowd.

“AL,” Jessie screamed in the ex-vice president’s face, “This is IAN. He’s a new guy on my staff!”

Al, his arms around both of us looked from Jessie to me and smiled, “I know! Ian and I met earlier. We were having a fascinating discussion about population statistics of midwestern cities.”

Jessie looked down and held the power button on his camera. It illuminated his face, “Ian knows a ton about Mac’s and Apple stuff! If you ever need help with your iPhone he can come up and help you.”

Al leaned in toward me and shouted, “What did he just say?”

I cleared my throat as Jessie backed away from us and leveled his camera, “He said if you ever need help with your iPhone I can help you out.”

Al shouted in my ear and what he said never made it all the way through.

“What?!” I shouted back.

Al leaned in closely, “I said, the fucking iPod is fucking broken! Fucking thing doesn’t work!”

It wasn’t completely clear, but I understood something profound had just happened, and I began to smile uncontrollably.

Jessie shouted at us, “SMILE GUYS.”