The Limitation of Age

For as long as I can remember, I have never felt that I am the correct age. I hope that many people can relate to this feeling. We are constantly either too young or too old to do something. In the US, there are three main age milestones: eighteen, twenty-one, and sixty-five. Eighteen is the age of majority, when you gain the rights and responsibilities of adulthood. Twenty-one is the legal age for drinking and gambling in the US. Sixty-five, at the other end of the spectrum, gives you access to Medicare, retirement, social security, and senior’s discounts.

But there is one more age restriction that I am currently encountering: in order to avoid a young driver’s fee, you have to be at least twenty-five to rent a car. This can be a real problem if you need to rent a car for a specific purpose, such as a vacation or a business trip. It can also be a problem if you simply want the freedom and independence that comes with being able to drive yourself wherever you need to go.

For example, let’s say you are planning a trip to Olympic National Park in Washington. Olympic National Park is located on the Olympic peninsula in north-western Washington, about a three hour drive from Seattle. While it is easy to fly into Seattle and get from the airport to the city, getting to Olympic National Park is not easy and some trails are impossible to access without a car. Unlike some national parks, which have a single entrance and a concentrated area of interest, Olympic National Park covers an area of 1,442 square miles. It can be a hundred mile drive between trailheads. There are no buses that take you to all the areas of interest. The only solution is to have a car.

So what is an aspiring, young traveler supposed to do? Pay the fee. It is just infuriating that when you have the most free time, you are the most restricted. Throughout university, I was financially restricted (I couldn’t afford to take large vacations). Now that I have a well paying job, I have to balance my time off. Finally, it is now costing more than it would if I was just a couple years older. Later in life, we may have additional responsibilities, such as partners and children, that can complicate our plans. Finally, once we have worked our entire working life, we reach the point where we have time, but we have lost the ability to enjoy what we could have before. We can no longer take full advantage of the time we set aside for vacation, going on the hikes that we wanted to, eating the food we thought we would enjoy, and taking in the experiences we dreamed about. It reminds me of the quote from Richard II by Shakespeare:

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numbering clock:

My take away from today’s post: don’t waste time. It will never be the perfect time. Enjoy what you can when you can because you never know when time will decide to waste you and you’ll never have the chance. Life is so rich, enjoy it.