Scary “EARLY 50’s”

Post lunch break, while taking a stroll, was talking to a friend. Same office talk and issues. While talking, he uttered “we are in early 50s now”, and post that almost everything got neglected by me.

I was just responding for the sake of responding. “in early 50’s” caught so much attention, that I started thinking of it only.

I generally get confused when we say we are in 21^st century, when it still 2000 going on. Now I understood that logic and with similar logic the “early 50’s” was still a shock to me.

What all things changed, I still talk in the same way to my school friends, we are just not together or else we could have fought the way we used to do it that time.

I still not learned to buy good vegetables in the market, poor at negotiations – as a kid I used to get a good one from my mom and now from my wife.

I still do the same old PJs/silly jokes and laugh, which is generally not expected from a mature person in “early 50s”.

Then why this sudden shock facing the reality.

Lately, whenever my birthday approaches, I feel some kind of anxiousness. The excitement I used to have as a kid is totally lost. I laugh, celebrate, accept gifts but that enthusiasm is totally lost.

Why this may be happening and why it’s difficult to accept the dreaded “early 50’s”.

I think it’s definitely not the receding hair, adding weight or losing the skin sheen for few.

After giving a thought, I tried to go to the roots of this.

I think, we decide certain things to self, it may be some things to be completed, some milestones to be achieved by so and so time.

When deciding those things, we also decide a time frame, and when it’s not happening as per the timelines, it keeps bothering us.

We look at our peers, indirectly some comparison happens and again it tells us that we are not performing the way we should and time is running out.

Or many a times, we keep achieving everything we once aspired for, within the set timelines, but we only keep changing the goalposts, to make it even big, large, some more extra and fell in the trap of not expecting & accepting the reality of “early 50’s”.

It’s even difficult when we see people having nothing and not even worrying about the future. A family which station themselves at roadside, the toddler in the mother’s lap, the father or the grand dad, all free soul guys.

This “early 50’s” will soon turn to “early 60’s” [thinking of it giving shivers].

So what to be done to accept it – be content with whatever going on or keep pushing oneself till the needed not achieved.

Or always keep running behind the “aspiration + 1” goal.

Still can’t decide.

You too face this?

Vb