The other night my roommate walked in to admire herself in my full length mirror, something she does fairly often.
“This looks cute, right?” she said, turning back, sideways and front again.
“Sure, if you’re going for hooker-chic,” I said.
This is typically how our conversations go. She asks me how her outfit looks, I tell her the truth as I see it, she laughs, I laugh. She goes out to some ridiculous club, I go back to my book.
She asked me once if I wished I were in my 20s again. I didn’t hesitate before saying no. I back-pedaled a little, saying maybe, but only if I could know everything I do now. The truth is, while she’s often pissed off or stressed out, I’m usually happy and care-free. Why would I want to return to a time in my life when angst was my default mode?
I remember being so fearful of 50, I started using eye cream before I could drive. I did waist bends as I blow dried my hair and donkey kicks as I waited for my nails to dry. I was fearfully obsessed with growing old and getting fat.
A funny thing happened on the way to my middle ages: I stopped caring. I mean, I do care about my appearance, but it’s more about how I feel than anything else. I eat right and exercise to maintain good heath, not to stop gravity or compete with 20-year-olds in a swimsuit competition. I dress more for comfort than to impress and I’m well groomed because I’m a professional and want to be treated as such.
But the most noteworthy thing about hitting the midway mark is that I’m way happier and more content than my younger self ever was. In my 20s and 30s I was almost never satisfied; I always wanted something better, bigger, fancier. I cared about what everyone thought, was always worried about the future and fretted about the past. In the end, I just wanted to be happy. But it was a complicated package of requirements to achieve that.
Now? The past is history and I really don’t care what most people think. Generally, I’m as happy as I make up my mind to be and a shift in attitude can change my day, even if it’s half over. I’ve learned lessons that can only be acquired by years of living, the most important being that acceptance is the answer to most of my problems.
It’s not just me who’s happy and content for no reason at all. A recent study at Northeastern College of Science indicates that older people are just happier. Another study shows happiness rebounds after 50 and peaks when people are in their 80s.
So there is something to look forward to as we add birthday candles to our cake: increasing happiness. It’s comforting to know there’s an upside to aging that’s backed by science.
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Comments
That's a very healthy approach to accepting aging gracefully.
R♥
At 52 there is the existential crisis of knowing that more than half of my life is most likely behind me. But I'm more prepared to let life go, I'm calmer and more accepting and more patient. There is a kind of serenity and peace that comes with knowing you need not be concerned with what others are doing or all that is going on in the world. There is a dispassionate comfort in knowing that no matter what goes on you've seen it before, or something quite enough like it, and you know that letting things pass without you will not be such a loss as you once imagined. The rush and roar of millions and billions of people going about their lives no longer feels like life passing me by, but more like a distracting noise I'm glad to avoid or to observe quietly from outside the fray.
The repetitive patterns and rhythms of existence become more familiar, and the enticing lure of novelty or surprise is no longer so shiny and exciting, but carries the richer and more tempered irony and wry humor of realization that behind the facade will be something not so surprising, and that the promise of the new will lose its lustre much sooner than the eager optimism of youth might have expected. One has a keener appreciation for what is solid, what is valuable, what is enduring and timeless and real, and what is fleeting or illusory, what promises should be believed and which to dismiss as the ordinary deceptive appearance of transitory existence.
@Fusuna, Thank you. I think if acceptance and aging go hand in hand, a calm happiness will follow.
@Jeff, That's an interesting perspective. Well put. There is a comfort in knowing that whatever crisis is going on will pass because we've been through it before, and it did indeed pass. Thanks.
FXDD