Mid-life Crisis?

The impending arrival of my 60 th birthday is something I both wish to avoid and to mark with activities of significance. Multiple times each day, now, I have fleeting thoughts that fall into both categories. Under “avoidance” the overriding theme is that of mortality and more awareness of my own expiration date being closer than it was two decades ago.

There is a catalogue of various regrets, many having to do with misbehaviors fueled by alcohol, in addition to eons of lost time when I was in that void. In the “significance category I aspire to joyfully celebrate my existence thus far with some event that triggers additional enormous joy. At the top of that list right now? Seeing Barry Manilow in Las Vegas. What better way for me to exude joy, than watching a man who, now 80, appears to be fed still by performing songs he has sung for decades.

I have learned that many women use the occasion of their 50 th to shed certain societal expectations, predominantly those that center around the notion of filtering behavior, or language, or expectations. In short, celebrate your Self and do what YOU want. I’m late to this party, but some of these notions float in this almost-60 ether as well.

I wonder about the origins of these turn-50-and-let-it-all-hang-out ideas. Women Of a Certain Age use words around freedom over and again when describing this phase of their lives. They feel free of societal constraints, sometimes free-er of young children and those pressures, and there are certain bodily freedoms, too. But it seems deeper than that. It’s skin-shedding, like the snake wriggling free, the macaw molting at change of season. Squirming out of, and then away from, that which no longer serves us.

What is contained in that bucket of discards?

Opinions of others? Opinions of ourselves? Constraint imposed by society in terms of our behavior, our dress, our parenting, our career? (My own abrupt exit from Medicine has raised more than a few eyebrows.) If I take a moment to consider, the list is endless, and I can keep adding and adding and adding and adding.

I wonder then: what am I now moving toward?

A word that comes to mind is “ownership.” I can give lip service to shedding these varied unwanteds, and bask in the glory of not giving a damn about what other people think, but how realistic is that for my brain that’s been socialized for nearly six decades to absolutely pay attention to what other people think? That is a change that can’t possibly occur overnight, with shedding happening on my birthday eve and a bright rainbows-and-unicorns-filled awakening on my birthday. By the same token, I can declare that I’m going to remain bra-less for the rest of my life, come hell or high water, but the fact is, that makes playing pickleball slightly less pleasant.

There are a series of “both-ands” here. Perhaps the lesson contained within this upcoming significant rite of passage boils down not to ownership but rather to agency and choice, and greater good. I am more cognizant than ever of my limited time left on the planet to have significant impact, even legacy. That my timer is finite ticks in my ears almost constantly now, much more so than my biological pregnancy clock ever did.

Every day now matters, as my timeline for contributing to the universe shortens with each sunset. And still, I fritter on Netflix or trash fiction. #becausehuman.

But I am aware, in technicolor, of my limited remaining time. I will hope to see my centenary, but genetics and environmental factors do make that less likely. So, the awareness of my more limited time ought to be celebrated, and maybe that is what this birthday is about. Awareness that it’s time to get off the pot, get out into the world and move those mountains that I can move. There are plenty to choose from. Time to get off of the stadium seats, away from the sidelines, and into the arena.

Jenie

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