50
To reach 50, as I have just done, is certainly to pass a significant milestone. Even if you live to be a hundred, half your life is definitely over. There aren’t really all that many things you’re too young for any more, but the list of things you’re too old to contemplate is beginning to lengthen ominously. Probably too late now to change career unless you’re going for something a bit less demanding; probably too late to take up a new sport, unless it’s bowls.
On the other hand, there are some considerable compensations. There are beginning to be things you don’t have to worry about any more (like your career). You no longer care much whether your clothes look fashionable, or whether you might look stupid (one reason why older parents are especially embarrassing to their offspring). This is partly a by-product of the great change which growing older brings, namely that fewer and fewer people impress you. Age and dignity certainly don’t impress you much any more, and in any case half the people in positions of respect and authority appear to be ignorant teenagers these days, filled with excitement about things that they think are new, but actually happened at least twice before; things which are supposed to change the world, but will actually be forgotten in five, no three years. Things it’s not even worth learning the details of, to be honest. This is why older people sometimes appear to possess maturity and patience: actually it’s because they only have a loose, general idea of what’s going on.
Happy Birthday to me, anyway.
