The Mind F#@$ of Turning 50
Milestone birthdays and taking stock
I’ll be fifty next month. With the big day approaching, tons of thoughts have flooded in. Questions about my life are swimming in my head.
What has it all meant? Was there a grand design? Did everything happen for a reason, or was it all random?
As a kid, I thought I was destined for greatness. As my birthday nears, I feel let down by my regular life.
Being content with where you are feels as if you’re resigned to being stuck there. You imagine you’ve got to be unhappy to be motivated to change.
That has led me to a lot of unhappiness. When life wasn’t perfect, or even when it was, I’d get depressed. I couldn’t be satisfied.
Stagnation wasn’t something I wanted to allow. I couldn’t live with it. If I weren’t moving toward a goal, and a difficult one at that, life wouldn’t be bearable. It would feel pointless.
First as a competitive bodybuilder and then as a martial artist, goals drove me. Getting ready for a contest or working toward that next belt was all the motivation I needed. Improving as a human wasn’t why I was doing it. That was just a side effect.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was building resilience. The ability to endure a tough training camp to get into the best shape possible, while following an extremely strict diet, toughened me up. Getting beat up on the martial arts mat made me humble. The discipline I learned in each serves me well every day.
I never wanted to listen when people complained about aging, but I get it now. Your body starts to deteriorate, even in the slightest way. No matter how small the change, you notice it, like a neon sign on your forehead that’s flashing ‘OLD’.
And along with the physical changes, there are the aging people around you. As you get older, so do they. Parents become elderly, and suddenly death comes into their minds and yours. You have to think about things you never wanted to face. The fact that everyone you know, including you, will die.
I must admit, I’m not content with my life right now. My living situation isn’t ideal, I don’t have a girlfriend, and my work could be better. Only parenting is going right.
Does that mean my life has been a failure because all those years have only led me to this point? What if things don’t get any better, and this is it? I die a malcontent.
I guess that would be more poetic than dying a success. But falling from grace without a comeback is terrible because it kills the fairy tale. Things won’t always turn out happily ever after.
But they may turn out okay for someone else. Your misfortune could ultimately lead to something beneficial for others. You can hope that your pain leads to something positive.
Fifty used to seem so old to me. It still sounds old, especially when it’s me having the birthday. You never imagine yourself at fifty when you’re young. You imagine you’ll look like you did at your peak forever. But at some point, you stop getting better and just try to maintain what you’ve got. When that gets hard, the real challenge begins.
Now, you have to learn how to trick your body into staying young. You’ve gotta change your workouts or improve your diet. You have to get your rest and moisturize. You can’t afford to be undisciplined.
We’re not prepared for aging by our parents. They don’t convey all the difficulties that happen as you get older. Sure, my mom complains every day about aches and pains and how much aging sucks, but she’s seventy-eight now. She’s earned the right to complain. But what about when she was in her fifties? I never heard her say a negative thing about it.
Fifty is an age you celebrate when things are going well, and you dread when life isn’t where you’d like it to be. It’s more than halfway to the end. You can’t even be called middle-aged anymore, unless you live to be a hundred. There are communities for people over fifty-five all over the place. You’re not far from being able to check yourself into a nursing home.
Fifty is also a time in life when some of us reevaluate where we want to go. We may feel a pull to make a big change, realizing we haven’t been happy for a long time. Relationships may be strained as we delve deeper into our feelings.
The big positive about turning fifty is all the experience you’ve gained. You’re old enough to have collected some wisdom but young enough to have lots of time to put it into practice. I feel as if I’ve lived many lives because of the wide array of things I’ve done. I’ve got tidbits to share and advice to dispense.
Fifty is hopefully the end of my six-year existential midlife crisis. It’s a time when I’ll take stock of the good that I’ve done, and decide whether I’ve lived a life to be proud of or one marked by unfulfilled promise. I can’t say for sure which it’ll be.
A couple of my friends turned sixty this past year. They both look way younger, and I can’t believe they’ve already reached that milestone. With the looming prospect of fifty kicking my ass, I don’t know what I’ll feel like ten years from now, or where I’ll be, but I have a feeling I’ll be having a little anxiety. Or maybe I’ll finally be content with my life just in time for that nursing home.
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