It's a big, round number

It’s a blog entry one half-century in the making!

Well, isn’t that dramatic?

I have been on this planet 50 years now, and this is an occasion for reflection. I remember turning 40. It was no big deal; in fact, I kinda liked it. For some reason, when I was younger, I thought my forties would be “my decade.” Gone was the baby face, the ineffectiveness, the immaturity. Largely gone, too, was the self-doubt and anxiety, replaced by a confidence in myself and my talents. (Which is not to say I was happy about my inability to sing or dance, or the annoying changes in my aging body). I was a little too intense as a teenager, a little too awkward in my 20s; and my 30s were the decade of change. In my 40s, I expected to come into my own, and that was mostly true.

So, now that I am officially on the other side of that, what now? I have a new shot glass, compliments of dear friends, that says “50 is the new 21.” Throughout the past few weeks, I have also been reminded that 50 is just a number. This is true, of course, but it is a big fucking number!

At 50, I am different. There is no denying it, and I really don’t want to. There are pros and cons, good changes and bad; some, downright evil. For the good, I feel good, sometimes I even feel groovy. I am happy. There is a lot of contentment in my life, mercifully free of a lot of regret. I feel I’ve grown into 50 pretty well. Sure, I feel I’ve left things undone, but this doesn’t seem to bother me as much as I expected. The anxieties of my younger years have changed and been replaced. My sons have grown into men. That’s something that concerned me greatly when I was younger, and now they are launched. It’s like those halcyon days of late summer, when it is time to pick the fruits of previous hard work. Gone is my marriage, which is a topic for another time, but the point now is the marriage obligations and duty, the highs and lows offered by that station are gone—favorably, at least in my mind. (It’s funny that I consider my marriage a success even though it is over). I am me, a ripened me—my potential filled as much as it is likely to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not ready to lay down and be chow for the posies! It’s more a fulfillment I feel.

The bad stuff doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would, but I do not want to pretend it doesn’t exist. 

I guess it all comes down to a series of questions:

Is it good to be 12 years old? Is it good to be 18? 21? 32? 40? 50? At the time I asked myself these questions, the answers were surprisingly consistent. There were pros and cons to each age. I appreciated the pros, far less the cons, but in the end it was life. And I’ve always been happy to be alive.