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Sparkle (3)
I have a secret to share. It will be my birthday in a few days (on January 26), and I will be fifty. That's not the secret though - I'm pretty sure my friends and family already know this, since I've been reminding them for months - or they've been reminding me.
The secret is...it's not so bad.
The way to turn fifty is to embrace it. Tell everyone you know and just enjoy it. Let your friends and family celebrate you for a little while - how often does something this big, this momentous (a half a century!) happen to you? Look around you and see what you have - don't think about what's missing. Don't dwell on the things that didn't happen, the opportunities missed, the loved ones gone, the friends at a distance. Forget the money that you've lost or the journey not taken. Just be glad to have this moment - turning fifty.
Also, forget about that whole "fifty is the new forty" thing. Fifty is not the new forty. Fifty is fifty. Fifty is middle age, with all that implies - whether your body is hard or soft, your face smooth or wrinkled, if you look older than you are or younger than you are - well, that's fifty. Maybe I'm alone in this, but I am way, way happier at fifty than I was at forty. I feel more sure of myself, I have terrific friends and family (who never let me forget I'm almost fifty), and a good marriage. Maybe your life is different - but if you think about it, really give it some thought, I bet there are plenty of details you wouldn't change for all the years you've spent on this earth. By the time we are fifty, we've learned a lot about ourselves, and a lot about the world. Wisdom becomes part of what we have to share with others, and unlike when we were younger, we know what we're talking about. By the time you turn fifty, you have hopefully developed a set of beliefs and ideas, a moral code that you feel strongly enough about to defend no matter who you may be talking to. Truth is easy to spot, deceit even easier. At fifty I can read people pretty well and decide fairly quickly how I feel about them. This is good... but sometimes not.
At fifty I've grown more cynical and have lost a bit of the sense of wonder that makes being young so exciting. It seems that's to be expected - after all, a lot has happened to me in fifty years. I miss that sometimes, that feeling of wow! that comes with revelations of truth and the clicking of my brain when something is suddenly understood. I already understand.
That's not to say I wasn't awestruck when I saw Paris for the first time last year. But that's my point, I guess. It takes those big things to make me weak in the knees now.
The truth is, at fifty you've probably lived more years than you have left to live. You most likely have raised your family and a lot of the major accomplishments of your life may have already occurred. If you aren't a famous movie star or CEO of a corporation, it most likely won't happen. At fifty, you have a lot left to do, but maybe not as much left to learn. Sure, there are still surprises and discoveries to be had, but now, more often than not, you have to seek them out - they won't just appear as often as they did when you were, say, twenty-five.
And yet - the little things become so much more important. The moments that we're happy, the quiet of a Sunday evening, lunch with friends, a phone call from your kids to say they miss you - these become the things we appreciate most of all, because they're what make up a life.
Ultimately, turning fifty is good because we're still here. We're still here. And there's more to come.
Sharon Greenthal emptyhousefullmind.com
