The Halfway Point

Forty. It's interesting to me that so many people reference middle aged as fifty. How many people honestly live to be 100? There are milestones in our life that give us pause and this is certainly becoming one for me. Like the next chapters in the new book you found, you want to keep reading but realize it's three in the morning and you have to get up at five, so you set it down on the night stand all the while dying to know what happens in the end. I picture this as the second half of my life. I get lost in all the wonder of it all. Who will my children be, will they be married, have children of their own? Will they have successful lives, but most importantly, happy ones? Who will I become? I get to retire this half of my life. Will I get to sit in my little room full of peaceful reminders that I have had a fantastic life clicking the keyboard and writing something great about the place I just traveled to? Will I finally have gotten to see New York, California and all the places in between? I'm less than a month away from officially starting what feels like a new chapter of my life.

There are moments of reflection when we come up on these types of turning points in our lives. We look back and get lost in the nostalgia of our childhood, our early adult years and the chaos that ensued while we were trying to figure it all out. The memories that make us laugh until we cry and the memories that make us cry because the burdens have been hard to carry. The love and the loss, the give and the take, the confusion and the clarity. I often imagined at this point in my life I would be this whimsical person that would call my best friend in the middle of the night when I can't sleep and pick them up and head out for a drive to the 24 hour diner, then come back and sit on my porch cuddled under a cover and watch the sun rise for the day. I have always been one to embrace the rain, but those rain showers that wake us up in the middle of the night have always made me want to run outside in my birthday suit and just allow myself to feel the freedom of it washing everything away, the vulnerability of it all sound so exciting. Lucky for me, my neighbors aren't close enough to see me in the middle of the night. We spend so much time thinking our life has to be scheduled that we forget to just live it. We lay in bed staring at the ceiling when we can't sleep, annoyed that we are going to feel like garbage the next day and all the while if we just embraced that moment our whole lives could be different. We have this idea that we have certain things that we have to do, go to bed by ten, sleep all night, get up and live our day the way everyone else does. We were all sleep deprived when we had babies, and yet here we still are. We'll sleep when we are tired. This mindset is starting to make me restless. I want to live, actually live this second half of my life.

I've noticed myself taking things in a little more than I ever have. The colors of the sunset, the smell of my children and the people that I get to be close to, the sounds of the leaves, the rain, the laughter. .. the quiet. I notice the effort, and the lack of effort of people in my life. I've noticed that all the insecurities that I felt twenty years ago are suddenly fading. How quickly twenty years can pass. We wake up one day and here we are, the halfway point. I feel like a butterfly breaking out of the cocoon, like I've reached this point of passage where I'm allowed to speak freely and be myself. Like it's the perfect time to shed the past and break free, running toward the brightest, carefree, best is yet to come, second half of my life. There's always a chance that tomorrow might not come, but there is this hope that I'll get to have another forty years.

I sometimes find though, there are moments where the fear of it all creeps in too. The fear of the unknown, the fear of trying to navigate through everything carefully because life is so fragile. I had a conversation recently with my only sister about growing older and how we sometimes prohibit ourselves from truly living because of the fears we have. It's so funny to think of how adventurous we were as children, and how careful we become as adults. We weren't afraid of getting hurt, we weren't afraid that the ground beneath us might give way, we just did it, without hesitation. We didn't second guess all the what ifs or all the things that could have gone wrong. Somewhere along the way we trade in that zest for fear. She shared with me a recent pod cast she listened to where the main idea was to 'do it afraid'. Wow, how powerful is that? If we just embrace knowing that we are going to be afraid and prepare ourselves for the fear we will feel, we aren't going to miss out on something that could be amazing. We have to learn to push ourselves to try and do things we wouldn't normally do before our hour glass runs out of sand. It would be a shame to reach the end of our life and have regrets because we were afraid to step outside our comfort zone. Can we be carful and carefree? I suppose this is somthing I'm going to find out.

We reach this age where our kids are getting older and the freedom that we didn't think we'd ever have is finally here, but we have been so caught up in building our careers and the mundane routine of it all that we have forgotten what it is that we even like to do. It's a time of rediscovering ourselves, our relationships, our friendships and our passions. We aren't as agile as we used to be, but we aren't broken. We have to remind ourselves that it's a marathon and not a race! I feel this every time I walk up or down the stairs in my house and my knees sound like the rice crispy cereal when the milk gets poured on. Growing older might add wear and tear to our bodies, but it's still such a blessing.

There is such a stigma in our world about growing older, but really doesn't it make us one of the lucky ones? We complain so much sometimes of our ailments, yet there is a mother out there wishing her child she had to burry to young, got the same privilege that you're getting. There is the elderly person lying in the nursing home laughing at you for being so weak. My grandma passed when she was 78, and I can remember her laughing at me when I'd tell her different things about feeling old, she'd tell me I'm still just a baby. Growing old is not for the weak and it's a privilege denied to many. Be thankful you're growing older. I'm certainly going to be thankful. My body may hurt, my wrinkles may be deep, and my health may start to fade, but I'm here. I get to watch my children continue to grow, I hope to dance with them at their wedding, I hope to hold my first grandchild. I hope to keep dancing in the rain, and to embrace what's yet to come with an open mind and a heart full of excitement. Life is meant to live, and I intend to do just that. Who's with me?