I’m not what I’d consider an old man, but I’m older than I’ve ever been.
It’s an interesting thought that I’m older than when I started writing this blog, but younger than I will be when it’s finished.
Why the introspection?
I turned the big Five-O (50) last weekend. An age I used to think was in the distant future but is now here. It’s given me cause to stop and think, well to be truthful, mope a little and get stroppy!
My first experience of someone hitting fifty was my Gran. I remember going to her house after school for her birthday tea. We were supposed to meet Mum there, but she was late. Turns out she’d hit a collie dog on the way up to us and wasn’t in the best of spirits – understandably. The owner was okay with it, as much as could be, as he’d let the dog run free next to a main road after all. Mum was distraught which put a bit of a dampener on the whole affair.
Other than the dead dog, I recall sitting in Gran’s kitchen thinking how many years it would be until I was fifty years old. With my limited mathematical ability, it was some difficult mental calculations, and I can’t remember what number I came up with. But it was thirty-six years to be precise. My family had kids young in them days you see! It seemed so far in the distance as to be an impossible number for a fourteen-year-old boy to comprehend.
Then, as the years passed, more people that are significant in my life hit the milestone.
” The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been”
Madeleine L’Engle.
First, Dad in 2000, then Mum in 2004. Various aunts and uncles also hit the milestone as well. My wife, bless her, hit it in 2020. What really sank home was when my older cousin hit fifty – I still see him as a young lad going out chasing the opposite sex!
I realised that no matter how much I wished it wasn’t, the milestone was approaching like an articulated lorry bearing down on me in the rear-view mirror. No matter how fast I drive, it will catch me eventually. Well, just like the lorry in that Steven Spielberg film – Duel, it has.
Is it really that bad?
I’m now fifty, an age I’ve spent the last year trying not to think about. It’s the age of Saga membership (Bastards are already emailing me) and getting ready to die. Of preparing for a retirement village and the kids asking where my will is.
A milestone I thought would destroy me, especially with my precarious mental health.
But do you know what? It hasn’t. I don’t feel any different than I did last week when I was forty-nine.
No, that’s wrong. I don’t just feel different, I feel better.
“I don’t just feel different, I feel better!”
Me 🙂
Yes, my body may have aches, scars and other mileage marks it didn’t have when I became aware that you could live to fifty years old.
I have gained wisdom. I’ve seen and done things that have made me a nicer, more rounded person. I’ve made and lost friends. Fallen in love, and out. Got dream jobs and left them. Bought dream motorcycles, and, you guessed it, sold them. All things that have helped me become who I am today. A happily married father of two daughters, two dogs and a cat.
Even though I understand myself in a way that I could only dream of twenty-years ago. I still have a lot to learn, which is what is starting to make life interesting again.
A quote I read a couple of weeks ago has really stuck with me and made me grateful to be experiencing my fifty’s
“Do not regret getting older. It is a privilege denied to many.”
Sorry, cannot find attribute.
That one sentence began my change of view. I thought of school friends who have passed. People I met as a police officer who left for work in the morning and never came home. Most of them under forty, let alone fifty. Locally, two teenagers, barely seventeen, have recently died needlessly in a car crash – killed by a drunk driver who fled the scene. They will never experience twenty, let alone fifty.
I realised that I have been taking being alive for granted and not shown gratitude for the incredible game of chance I have been winning for the last half-century.
I am grateful for the opportunity to continue growing and improving as a fifty-year old
I intend to improve my fitness, gain a degree in a mathematical or science subject and generally enjoy life. I am going to learn from the mistakes of my past and make a raft of new ones. I am also going to develop this blog and try to share my learning with the aim of helping as many people as possible.
Everything from now on is about growth and relishing my age, not fearing it.
The challenges of my iffy mental health aside, I am looking forward to the future like never before. And my blog will help me find the way.
Steve