What It Means To Be Middle Aged
Let’s face it. No one wants to admit that they are facing middle age. It’s like letting go of your youth and admitting that old age is right around the corner. We don’t want to admit that we need hair loss prevention remedies or that we might not have accomplished everything we wanted to yet.
Whether we know it or not, we play into the middle age game more than we know. Whether we are wearing a belly belt to make our tummies look flatter, or when we suffer upper back pain that comes after trying to play sports with kids half our age, we grumble and moan. We truly appear aged.
We are supposed to be buying sports cars, having affairs with younger counter parts, or selling off our property in the hopes of moving off to a land of the unknown. Yet we show up at our jobs, remain faithful to our spouses, and we even still drive the sensible affordable car we know that we don’t really enjoy.
Why does all this matter, really? Are we so afraid that middle age will bring us closer to our death that we are afraid to admit we haven’t quite really lived yet? Are we worried about what the neighbors might think or that we’ve sown all of our wild oats and we are now stuck in the land of responsible action?
In the end it’s all about who we were. It wasn’t about our salary or how many hours we logged at work. It’s how many smiles we brought to the world, how many tears we offered our shoulders to. I don’t think we have to stop any of that just because someone has decided that our life is half over.
Life is not a competition and we don’t need to fight like we’re in the last round. Because we’re not. As we age we still give much to the world and to those around us, whether we ever produced that album we swore we would in our high school yearbook.
We do not have to prove that we belong in this world. We owe no explanation to the kids on the corner or to our bosses who wonder why we have yet to be promoted in spite of ourselves. Our goals are our own, and we have determined that we have not met them. Even if all the evidence around us says that we have, we wonder in our hearts what life would have been like if…
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Tags: middle age, pain
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