A week ago, I turned fifty.
If you are like me when I was a decade or two younger, you may wonder how I am still breathing, walking – functional even, at such a big age. Like, why have I not retired to obscurity, not spending all my days watching sunrises and sunsets?
Why am I still busy, even energetic, perhaps more energetic than I have been in the last ten years, with plans from here to Turkana?
How I was entitled to youth, expecting time to halt for me so I could remain forever young. No pressure to compete with time. That popular song we so love to misuse on our birthdays, ‘Eighteen till I die’, made sense. Other people could grow old, but not me, because I am/was special like that.
Then I hit forty, and I realised that I was not a vampire. Forty sneaks up on you. It is like no man’s land – you do not know if you belong to the young or the old. Your moods and joints scream ‘old’ but the brain screams ‘young!! At forty, you are bound to be scandalous as you try to prove (to yourself) that you still gorrit! Then comes the moment of panic when you peep at your one hundred items on the bucket list – you have only ticked three, and the un-ticked need energy and recklessness you no longer have.
Forty is the moment of truth. I understood the phrase, life starts at forty, but like many phrases in the Bible, it is a misconstrued phrase.
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Up to some point, life does begin at forty, but only if you accept that you are susceptible to ageing. Life, indeed, does begin at forty, but not physically – that one dips. It is when it hits that you have been living a life not for yourself, but for society.
And yet, there is nothing to show for it. You accept that society is an experienced narcissist that has been sucking energy out of you. Is it any wonder that women (especially) in their forties gain notoriety by becoming extremely and unapologetically opinionated and angry? ‘You have changed’ becomes synonymous to women of that age bracket.
A previously domesticated meek woman gains love for road trips and pub visits. This is when she stops hoarding guilty feelings about not turning up at family functions because she has a date with ‘the girls’. Her happiness first. She stops slaving for an ungrateful society, and stops worrying about public opinion.
By the time a woman hits fifty, she has perfected the art of loving herself first, learned to replace accusations of ‘being selfish’ to accusations of ‘too much self-care’, which is an awesome place to be.
Then there is the perspective. I was having one of those discussions with some girlfriends, and we were wondering if the current middle-aged man is getting more attractive. A high number of them seem to be, for lack of an alternative word, way sexier than the ones we knew during our youth.
It could be because we are older and of course, it would be a little weird to find young men as sexy – not that it doesn’t happen. But I think there is more.
As the current middle aged woman learns to love herself first, the male counterpart is no longer ashamed of grooming. Male vanity is now a thing so he proudly hits the gym, has a haircare routine, and he dresses well. And we are all here for it.
The current middle aged man got married a little late. By late, I mean late twenties or thirties, as opposed to our parents who got married in their teens or early twenties.
By the time they hit thirty, they were parents of ten children, and that took a toll on them. A back-then fifty-year-old looked well into his seventies because life dealt them a good one. When my dad died in his early sixties, I did not for a moment think he died young, neither did any of my siblings.
Now, my first born brother has outlived dad, is well in his early sixties, looks healthy, like a man on a mission to be active for the next forty years before he thinks of hanging his boots. Happy fiftieth birthday to me!