CHAPTER ONE
Perfect Forty!
No matter what year it is, what is happening worldwide, or the latest marketing craze, we cannot help getting older. Even though we cannot help getting older, we do not have to get old. For birthdays, some people, actually most people, feel positive about it. The cheer and joy of being older grasp them tight. Meanwhile, the remaining persons see beyond this. Although they may feel the cheer and joy as well, they also open their minds to the negative part. They see birthdays as one's days on earth being numbered. As a matter of fact, this is very true. The older you get, the lesser your days on earth. This is not meant to instill fear in you. Instead, it is to make you see two basic realities: one will get older, and while you get older, your days are numbered. When is then the perfect age to live life because that is one thing we are all searching for? This book is about the perfect age when we turn 40. It is about how we feel about getting older. This is about aging from the thirties to our forties. This book is not about back pain, knee pain, hair loss, or weight gain when we get close to 40. This is about an emotional rollercoaster, all we think and mentally feel at that age.
There is absolutely nothing that can stop time. Nothing can slow down time. Time machines are the only things close to it. But you know what? Time machines do not exist. Well, they do, but only in the fictional world. The only place where time moves at a slower speed would be in space. After all the fiction movies where traveling back in time is possible, you would really think that something like that is possible in today's technologically advanced world. But even if traveling back in time was possible, it would not guarantee that we would go back to how we looked at that particular time; we would still be the same age we are today, not a minute younger. The time machine only helps you travel back to visit your past, not actually change your age. And when you are done visiting the past, it brings you back to reality. In riddling words, age is the only thing that goes up and never comes down.
For some people, 40 is half of their life, and for others, it is the majority of their life. As crazy as it sounds, this is the truth. You don't have to be religious. You can believe in any faith of your choice. But the only thing we can do about this truth is make the best out of whatever is left out there for us. You should prepare for it and live by it, so you don't need to think of the help of a time machine. Religious or not, one day, we will be gone forever.
So why not call it a Perfect 40? This is a perfect age for everything. Think about it. Why would you not call it a Perfect 40? The forties is the time to make those changes, bold moves, and life-changing decisions. You have not made those changes yet. Suppose you have not taken those bold moves; there may be no better time than today. This is the age when your results come out. You are wondering what your results are, right? You know, as a very young adult, you get advice. Chief of them is that you should live your life without regrets. Thus, do as your heart says. You will be asked to take your steps with your future in mind. We all seek happiness, so they will tell you, you will learn that everything you do should be for your immediate and future happiness. One thing about regret is that it is a future effect. You are most likely not going to feel regret immediately. When they say marry who you love, it is because you will need it later in life. If you don't marry out of love but, let's say, necessity, your marriage will be estranged. Even if you feel the effect immediately, it worsens as time goes by. That time may be around your forties. Age 40 is around the time when your life fully reflects how you have lived your younger years. You will be a representation of the decisions and sacrifices you have made, and your fruits begin to show on you. Is 40 the perfect age? I am here to help you figure it out.
Stop and think for a moment before you go on with the book. What makes life perfect for you? What are the things that you find indispensable in your life? Who are the people in your life that you place a high value on? Do you love simplicity, or do you love the complicated parts of your life? Do you like to wake up early in the morning, or do you love to sleep in? Do you enjoy fresh food, or do you enjoy junk food? Do you enjoy cooking or cleaning? Do you love working out, or are you happy with your random exercise routine? Do you still love partying till late at night or being in bed at 9 in your pajamas and reading a book or a movie? What do you love the most about your day? What do you love the most about yourself?
At 40, you already know the answers to these questions. It is the age where you can confide in your maturity, knowing your choices and decisions are validly informed by the situations you have been through and the circumstances that have been surrounding your life. You are certain as to the events happening in your life. The doubts you had in your early to mid-twenties are gone. You will have learned from your bold mistakes in your 30s because you wanted to take a chance. You will know for sure what makes you happy and what drags you down, and if you do not know, who says it's late to find out? It is a common saying that it is not late until it is late. Until your last breath, self-discovery goes on. If you know that at 40, you are not certain about your life; what you want, what you are, what you love, what you do not like, etc., sit down and write that list. The first thing is to acknowledge that you need to be aware of these things. Self-awareness is fundamental to all humans, and mind you, no one is to make you feel like a failure for not knowing early (40 is not late, ha-ha. It is just 20x2). What's important is that you know it. Get answers to these questions, ask yourself more, think more, and always have your future happiness and well-being in mind as well. 40 is not a late age to start a life at all. Once you write it, eliminate and/or change whatever does not make you happy. Life is too short to waste time on sad, disappointing, dragging, and annoying people and things. At this age, we should not do things to make others happy. We should do things that make us happy. Instead, you should be living off the investments you have made in yourself. The truth is you cannot please everyone, and your happiness is actually yours to make. Others can make the change, and so can you. Do it!
Until we are 40, we do crazy things. We test our limits. We find out what matters to us (and what does not), what political party we like (or if we like a political party at all), which friends go with our flow and just want to binge on Netflix and chill with us (and what friends to avoid), what takeout places we like (and which ones our stomachs cannot handle the next day), what shows we like and dislike, what people make us laugh, what people put us down. The list goes on and on. We know who we are and what everything around us means. We have learned how to overcome challenges and manage our fears. We know what inspires us and what scares us. But at 40, we are just starting to have real fun.
Life really does begin at forty.
Up until then, you are just doing research. [1]
—CARL G. JUNG
Jung could not have said it better. By the time we reach 40, we have done a lot of research about who we really are. It sounds funny that we did a lot of crazy things before forty, but cab the result be compared to the preparation? See it this way. You were preparing for life before 40; you were actually. We are no longer told (or we should not be told) what to do. We have our values, views, and opinions. Throughout the research years, we have let many fears go—or we have learned to live with them. By 40, we have experienced love, hatred, anger, fear, horror, joy, surprise, sadness, betrayal, disappointments, confusion, and jealousy. We have had it all. We had figured out how to handle each and every situation on our own. It is at this age you can tell explicit differences. You will know when you are being played or when you are being abused, or when you are being loved because you have undergone years of varying experiences. If we had to write a resume about our life for our 40th birthday, we could easily say we are pretty well experienced. Everyone's competency level would obviously be different, but I think just like Microsoft Word, we all have worked with it.
When I turned 39, I had a fear! And I am sure I am not alone when I say the scariest part of life for a lot of women is getting older. There is even a name for fear of getting old—Gerascophobia. It is a form of anxiety or phobia that kicks in and makes us feel like we will never be the same. I know some women do not care about the aging process and just peacefully living the acceptance of the most natural process in life. But this acceptance was not that easy for some of us, including me. That fear is real. I can personally confirm it.
FORTY is that half-life milestone when we transition to being mature women. We say things like, "Oh, I'm getting old." And it is true, we are. After we turn 35, most women are concerned about getting old. Everyone talks about changes that will happen when we get older, but the truth of what that really means does not sink in until we are close to 40! By that time, fear sneaks in—we are afraid of losing our youthfulness, afraid of getting wrinkles, afraid of not having any more kids, afraid of not having enough energy, afraid of having health issues, and afraid that we have not accomplished enough in life.
At 40, some women are still single and have not found their "other half," some have not had kids, and some have gone through a divorce. Others are battling something in their life, have not found themselves, or do not know yet what they want out of life. All these unaccomplished presets in life lead to fears of never completing, never achieving, just never getting it done, and that it is too late. These are all mid-life fears. Some of us experience them at 40, others a little before or after 40. It is very normal to be afraid. It is very normal to feel these fears. But do not validate the fears by accepting their fears. Define yourself and your life by renewing your mind. You must know that 40 is not the end of life, nor is it the end of yours. If not, you won't be reading this book. Instead of settling with your fears, face them. Are you scared of losing your youthfulness? So what? If you lost your youthfulness – the boys chasing you, the outings, and the adventures – is youthfulness all there is to your life? Think about it, is being youthful what determines you, or is it merely a part of you? We are constantly growing, and it is very contradictory to expect our age not to grow with us. As the youthful young age has its peculiarities, so does being 40.
At some point after we pass the 35-year mark, we reflect on who we are, what our purpose in life is, what our values are, who our friends are, and what job we have (and whether we are happy with it). We decide what is important to us. Does this or that thing make us happy or sad? Do we love or hate our job? Do we love or hate the place we are at? Does it bring value to our life? Is it worth our time? There were a lot of questions around that time. Then, depending on what our answers are, we can decide what to do about it. Whatever is necessary, we make changes. If it makes us happy, we should continue. If it does not make us happy or does not bring value to our life, then we need to let it go. And no need to waste our time or wait it out and give it enough time to make it work. None of us knows how long we have on this earth. The 40 mark is a good time to think about life and re-evaluate our time and where it goes, so we do not waste it. This is not only common in women but quite common in men as well. That is when everyone talks about a man having a mid-life crisis. Men go through their midlife crisis by experiencing some of the following: drop in life satisfaction, increased sadness, increased mood changes, spontaneous decision making, a focus on change, ending plans or giving up, frustration and irritability with work, family, or self, and becoming withdrawn.
Once we get close to our 40th birthday, we feel differently about it than we felt about any other birthday we have had. In my instance, I felt scared, worried, and uncomfortable—my biggest fear was that there was not enough time to do everything I wanted. There was so much more to life for me. I wanted to do so much more.
I mean, I have aunties and uncles that were once 40. I remember when they were about that age. And the first thing that came into my head was, 'Do I look as old as they did at 40?' I mean, they looked old (to me, anyway). They looked like they did not care about what they had accomplished in their 40 years of life. It seemed like they did not even care what they wanted to do with the rest of their lives. It felt like they had stopped all their trying and doing just because they had turned 40. They had their spouse; a kid or two—and that was their life. They hated but worked at their jobs. They got an education but did not care for it anymore. They did not pursue their hobbies. They seemed to have stopped growing as individuals. I did not want to be like that. I did not want to feel like that. Even after 50 or 60, I want to continue learning more about life, the world, and new things out there. I want to continue and grow as a person. I want to continue and evolve to be a bigger and better person by learning and exploring. Why stop being someone you want to be after you turn a certain age? Why stop learning and evolving just because of your age?
So, despite all of this, why do I call our fourth decade of life a "Perfect 40?" it is a Perfect age not to care what others think, do what you want to do and not what others are telling you, become whomever you want to become. 40 is a perfect age to become happy, confident, and content and whomever you want to be. Imagine a 40-year-old in your mind. What comes to your mind first is that the person is an adult. And that is the truth. No one gets to shout at you for your decisions. No one gets to direct you on how to live your life. As a matter of fact, people under your age look up to you. It is the age when you have arrived from a long-distance journey. You have been commended and condemned. You have been criticized and celebrated. There is no way at 40. You have not had a vast life experience. Even before this age, some people have experienced more than you can imagine. This is not to say 40 is when you would have experienced all there is in life. You would have discovered the very basic things that will determine a perfect living for you at 40. In simple terms, age 40 is when you would have made a large discovery on matters concerning your life. The number of kids to have, sometimes, the person to spend the rest of your life with, the things you derive great pleasure from. This is it: 40 is that age where you exude an intentional life based on the knowledge you have amassed before 40. This is the perfect age to become the Perfect you at Perfect 40. Hopefully, we have many years ahead of us. We know what we want, or we can just figure it out. The best years are just ahead of us. All our insecurities are behind us. We have learned a lot of lessons and are ready to take on the world. We are ready to live our lives with love and purpose—bravely, boldly, and brilliantly!
Although perfect is an illusion, what word best describes a life that is intentional and determined? You barely have no limitations, your youthful fears are in handy, and you are just so certain about yourself; this is perfect! It is the point where you give out the rules of your life. Perfect may be an illusion, but it has a meaning.
What can you take from this chapter?
It is okay to feel different when your birthday comes. A lot of things have changed in the past year. No one should stay the same. You need to continue to change for the better. The older you get, the more confident you get. You know what you want in life.
Journal Notes
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Ask yourself...
1. Are you confident in yourself?
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2. Do you know what you like, or do you like what others like?
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3. Are you afraid of getting older?
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[1] Carl Jung, www.goodreads.com, Access date December 5, 2021, http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4483092-life-really-does-begin-at-forty-up-until-then-you.
