Turning 49 isn’t any landmark age by itself, other than being one last year to try and get things right before turning 50. I wouldn’t call this line of thinking a midlife crisis; the idea that I could be turning 49 and still be at midlife would likely be too generous by at least a decade. Do I care about turning 50? No and yes. No in the sense that I stopped being concerned about getting older the day my younger sister stopped having birthdays. But in the sense of seeing 50 as a benchmark year, which it undeniably is? It makes me consider what things I still haven’t done with my life that I’d always thought would be checked off and settled by now. Not only that, but what kind of life will I have entering my fifties? How prepared will I be for anything and everything that follows? And what can I still do with my one remaining year of forties to give myself a good start on that?
One thing I noticed this year, more than I think I ever have before, was how much older all of the reliable things and people from my life have become. I caught life doing something I already knew it did, but had never seen such strong examples of before. Time was standing still for me, and at the same time it was flying past. My middle nephew finishes high school in a matter of days and will soon begin a new stage of life that no one can predict or anticipate. Some of my cousins are already grandparents. People I’ve known since they were born are graduating from college. People I’ve had around me throughout my entire career are retiring.
When your job follows a very regimented schedule for each day and each week, it’s easy to lose track of yourself in the routine. You reach a point where you don’t even need to think about what you’re doing, because you know exactly what to expect down to the minute. It’s too easy to let that same routine carry over into the evenings and weekends, and before you know it life is just skipping along down the road without you even noticing. The days and weeks blend together, and they seem to drag on and on and on.
But they really don’t. Time evaporates when you aren’t paying attention to it. Without warning, the time you were hoping for (or counting on) to follow through on your hopes or dreams is a fraction of what it was when those hopes and dreams were only taking shape. I can put together plans of something I hope to do during any week or month, then get distracted by the everyday things and suddenly wonder where the time went, and how I didn’t get anything done.
Do I really want my lasting legacy to be that I created a useful and complete template for lesson plans?
Recently I downloaded a new release from a favorite band that I’ve been looking forward to for months. Upon the first listen, I was disappointed with everything about it because it didn’t sound anything like their previous work. I thought about my irritation throughout the day as I refused to play it again. I knew that, for whatever reason, this album was what the band felt they had to say right now, and this was the way they chose to say it. From that point of view, I broke down and listened again. Taking the music for what it was instead of what I had expected it to be made me rethink it. It still wasn’t what I had hoped for, but that didn’t mean it was without value or something I should readily dismiss.
I suppose life could, and probably should, be looked at the same way. Maybe while I’m using the next twelve months to try making myself into someone I can be comfortable with at 50, I’ll consider that perspective. Maybe it should be enough to accept all aspects of life as they are, as the results of my choices, instead of focusing on what was never realized. There seems like a certain calm in assuming that kind of acceptance. Something about it feels right.
But that doesn’t mean I have to stop hoping I can still reach for something else.
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