Embracing where we are

I am about to turn 40.

And you know what? I am totally ok about it.

I think there is some level of expectation that I should be facing it with trepidation or mild depression or a sense of impending doom. Conversations about entering the next decade, whichever one, always seem to be prefaced with some sense of "it is all downhill from here". 

But, you see, that hasn't really been my experience of any other decade (ok, to be fair, being under ten was way more fun than being a teenager, but that aside) so I'm assuming it won't be for this one either. 

There seems to be a societal obsession with "younger is better". Fuelled, undoubtedly, partly by celebrity culture, and by a multi-billion pound (probably, I haven't exactly checked) industry which tries to sell us youth in consumer products. 

Fuelled, ultimately I guess, by the fact that being happy with who and where you are in life is not good for business. Our economic model of consumer capitalism relies on dissatisfaction. And as getting older applies to us all, if you are relying on creating a culture of dissatisfaction with your reality it is probably a pretty good target. Like all the best marketing strategies it is subtle and insidious and pervasive. And, it seems, it works. 

It saddens me that we are trained to think, and so many of us seem to succumb to thinking that it is always some part of our past that is "the best days of my life". That there are all those things labelled as "good to do while you are young" which are for some reason going to be out of bounds past a certain age. That being and staying young is some sort of (unachievable) state we should somehow all aspire too. Even though it is not how I really feel, at times I find myself slipping into that rhetoric too. And then we are encouraged to spend our energy and our cash trying to fill the gaps in a life which isn't as good as it once was, isn't as good as it could have been, could still be if we dared to embrace possibilities we have written off as not things to do at "this age". 

And yes, maybe I'll feel differently about this whole age thing when my mind or body start failing me. But that is not where I am right now.

Right now life remains rich and full. Right now there is so much more to come.

I do personally think anyone who says school is the best days of your life is frankly bonkers or in extreme denial! I did, though, love my formative university years, source of so many happy memories. But my twenties too were full of variety and adventure and experience and growth and were genuinely wonderful. My thirties have been different to that which had come before, but in many ways life has continued to get fuller and richer (apart from maybe the last year or so which isn't entirely what I'd have chosen!)

And so I guess I trust the same will be true of my forties. The journey continues. It won't be the same as that which preceded it. There is no reason to think it isn't full of the potential to be even better. 

This started out with intention of being a pretty simple statement of the fact that you know what, being forty is probably going to be ok. It seems it turned into a bit more of a rambling treatise. I suspect no-one reading it is in the least bit surprised!