Last month, I turned 39, which seemed fine at the time.
I had no worries about 39. I imagined it as the victory lap for my thirties, a particularly busy decade consisting of two cross-country moves, my mother’s death, getting married, buying a home, and having a child.
So 39 should be no big deal. Just another shake of salt on top of what pepper I’ve got left in the waning days of my youth.
But then I typed “Average life expectancy” into Google and did some math.
On average, 39 is the year where, if we were hourglasses, we’d go from top-heavy to having a bit too much junk in my trunk.
In other words, this is the year that I officially become middle-aged.
My sincere apologies to the rose-colored optimists in their “nifty fifties” still cackling about the challenges of middle age, but the truth is that half of the average life expectancy is 38 for men and 40.5 for women.
Since I’m a glass of prune juice is half-full kind of guy, I use the gender-neutral 39 plus change.
I distinctly remember 40 being considered over-the-hill when I was young. Then it somehow moved to 50 during the era of fuzzy math so I was genuinely surprised to learn last month that I’m middle-aged.
It makes no sense to me why people would want to move the goal line when considering all of the studies reporting that middle-aged people are the least happy, with the lowest levels of life satisfaction and the highest levels of anxiety.
If anything, I’d like to stack the numbers a bit the other way. It won’t change my actual funeral date, but it might help me get all that bad stuff out of the way.
It’s frightening to think about our own mortality but we do ourselves no favors by pretending it doesn’t exist. I’m middle-aged, if I’m lucky.
At best, if I’m very lucky, I’m fastly approaching middle age. Considering the alternative, that seems pretty good to me. If I only live as long as Mom did, I’m already 59% of the way there.
That’s why I’m actively evolving my thinking from the “what will I be when I grow up” mindset of my youth to one that focuses on enjoying today. It isn’t always easy.
I have a house to run, a kid to raise, projects I’m dying to write, a stack of books too high to read, and so many experiences I still want to try like launching one of those pumpkin catapults or shaking Tony Danza’s hand.
Whereas I was constantly bored as a child and complained that there was “nothing to do,” now I can’t remember the last time I was bored and long for the days of “nothing to do.”
In fact, we build them into our vacations just to try and get a taste of it back. And it’s why I try to live each day like I won a small amount of money on a scratch lotto ticket.
While I’m terrified of death (always have been!), I’m more scared of becoming unadventurous.
My ten-month-old daughter Senita helps prevent this. This week it snowed for three days so we dropped all of our plans and went outside to play.
At first I hesitated to take her out alone because if the snow upset her I’d have to spend the entire afternoon consoling her and kicking myself for purposefully making her uncomfortable.
But she loved it.
The snow was perfect for packing so I decided to make a baby-sized snowman to see how she’d react. Though I was woefully unprepared and scurried back into the house with a confused baby in my arms looking for suitable parts.
That’s how our snowman ended up with a baby carrot nose and cucumber eyes. But the baby carrot was steamed so it just kind of smushed itself into the face and hung limply.
She loved it and it made me laugh. Then I shared a picture with some loved ones and it made them laugh.
It’s a snowman that 9-year-old me would’ve been embarrassed to make but that 39-year-old me considered the highlight of his week.
That seems like pretty good progress to me.
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