Time races along in merry to all our glare, but we realize the harsh realities when something rings an alarm. Birthdays have become the new alarm to indicate the bygone days and validation of the path we have trodden so far. Everything has not been so smooth-sailing but the way ahead looks like there could be more dents in stake to sail over. It was early morning when the coffee machine and my WhatsApp chimed to startle me from the bed in all its glory. It was hard to cozy up in the bed for too long as the day marked a milestone in my history as the 40th birthday.
Never again will I wake up to face this day as the already spent life has given a warning enough to show that I might have crossed half the well today. However, the energy and the vigor to splash my way into the rest of my life remains as vigil as possible. A birthday is a celebration, but what ensues further is the litmus test to stand our forthcoming hardships that might only surge, for all we know.
40 is an age that is dangling between weighing heavily to something not so old. The testosterones have settled and inhabited so much to conspicuously display what it has shaped like. We would want to feign innocence but being old would peer out its way to uncover the ruse in all its edges. However, the wits and the growth would not leave us to resign to fate and accept the age.
The boiling fury and the steely resolve gained over the years will provoke us to flaunt all the mojo even though we have been relatively crippled to some small extent physically.
It is an age where we succumb to anything that looks entertaining and enticing. Sometimes it would border on extreme delusion as our age would blow the whistle to give away the façade we have put on. Whatever we have missed would come back to haunt us in its own flavor to give the taste of how much we have lost in totality. The life lived and the undone deeds will cast a shadow to remind us of the course of actions that are still pending while dusting its way out. The done experiences would stare at the face and frown upon to indicate this is not enough.
We would realize we have actually enjoyed a merry-go-round with childhood being the smooth fabric of foundation. A thorough summation of our life would show that the formative years have indeed been a happy cruise. It is only what followed that fancy childhood has been interspersed with turbulence. We have stumbled a long way from our adolescence to reach this stage of our life and the scars over the years have had an impact to date. What has shaped us to this fate though remains entrenched in our minds, that future would be a flash of the reprised events lingers as an accepted fact.
It would run a trailer in our mind and the quest of what the future holds would thrill our sheer existence. We would become more self-conceited for the journey accomplished and least fret about the path that entails further. The complacence had set in by then as we know the life forward even though wrought with bumps could be navigable for all our efforts. However, the failed forethoughts of our adulthood could cast a shadow to give us a grim reminder of planning a future that is unprecedented for all we know.
We have reached the early threshold of old age striving ourselves to walk past the indications. To still be young is what we crave as we yield ourselves to fantasies of youth. We make ourselves look blemishless and try hard to conceal our age in all possible efforts. We labor over every step to bring charm on our exterior so people fall for it instantly. We go crazy over little things that foment our youthful desires. All this to keep alive the child in us and be amongst the most relevant of contemporary times.
Even though we have not lost touch with all the freshness and are indeed in the prime of our life, the hankering to be even more feisty is still bubbling in the chambers of our hearts. The tenacity to hold on to our craze by being more exuberant becomes our demeanor. Some people in their early 40s might get quirkier than they already are. There is nothing so appalling about that as it is the general propensity of people who touch that age.
As we age, we become more compassionate and wiser. This is the age that bears the moderate best of those qualities while sashaying the wisdom and behaving childlike at the same time. Enjoy these days as this precious phase would not resurface yet again. Become a part of this stint and revel in the most unalloyed way to get dissolved bit by bit into the old age graciously. Immersing in the freakishness of mid-age and accepting all of it for the sheer essence of reaching this stage will bestow upon you the courage to walk further amidst any quagmires.