Author's note - This one is a personal experiment of mine. My current obsession is 'Idioms', and I decided to embark on a blog post where I can try to use as many as possible in a single post. The sentiment is real. The phrases are just an experiment. Also, don't you just love how these LLM's can generate your own images in a jiffy based on context? For all my older blog posts, I have spent hours scrolling through images that felt right and didn't infringe any copyrights! Alright, moving on to the post..
There is something wonderfully inconvenient about turning forty. I arrived expecting a milestone and discovered instead that someone has quietly moved the goalposts. The things that once kept me awake at night suddenly aren’t worth the candle, while things that my younger self dismissed as boring, like sleep, peace, comfortable shoes, hair tied back, and people who text back, became worth their weight in gold.
My twenties were spent testing the waters. The thirties were spent keeping all the plates spinning. And then a couple of years into the forties, I am ready to ask the rather uncomfortable question: "But do you actually like the life you worked so hard to build?" And just like that, there is a chink in the armor. Not necessarily because something is wrong. Perhaps because, for the first time, I am willing to admit that the armor itself is heavy.
For years, I kept the powder dry, held my cards close to my chest, bit my tongue, and learned which way the wind was blowing before saying what I really thought. I toed the line when necessary, weathered the storm when there was no other choice, and crossed more than one bridge when I got to it. I learned to read the room. I learned that some hills simply aren’t worth dying on. And somewhere along the way, I became very good at keeping the show on the road.
Forty, however, has a peculiar way of making you wonder whether you still want to be in the show. Perhaps that is the real midlife crisis. Not sports cars. Not tattoos or piercings (I still admire mine). Not suddenly deciding that bangs are a good idea. It is realizing that I have spent years dancing attendance on people who wouldn't cross the street for me. That I have occasionally cast pearls before swine, carried coals to Newcastle, and thrown good money after bad simply because admitting something wasn't working felt worse than continuing it.
People can promise you the moon. They can talk until the cows come home. They can tell you they will change, they will call, they will show up, they will do better. Eventually, you stop listening to the music and start watching the feet. Actions, as the old cliché insists, speak louder than words.
Some lessons arrive gently. Others arrive by baptism of fire. You discover that still waters run deep, but sometimes silence is simply silence. Not every unanswered question contains a profound answer. Not every closed door needs to be knocked on again. Sometimes you have to let the hare sit. That may be one of forty's greatest gifts: Knowing when to leave something alone. You stop needing to put a fine point on everything. You don't need the last word quite as badly. You realize that being understood by everyone is a fool's errand. Let people misunderstand you. Let sleeping dogs lie. Let the chips fall where they may. You have spent enough years tilting at windmills. There is freedom in discovering that not every dog in the fight is yours.
Somebody else's chaos? Not your circus, not your monkeys.
Somebody else's opinion of you? Their cross to bear.
Somebody else's determination to misunderstand you? You can lead a horse to water, but at forty you finally stop standing beside the river begging it to drink.
You also become suspicious of poisoned chalices. The choices that costs you your peace. The friendship that survives only because you are needed to make their crowd look bigger and flashier. The relationship where you are forever walking on eggshells. The opportunity that looks glittering from the outside but requires you to sell your soul by installments. Not everything that glitters is gold. Sometimes the shiny prize is simply a rod for your own back. And sometimes walking away isn't losing.
Perhaps this is why forty can feel less like growing older and more like drawing in your horns. Not shrinking, but refining. You become selective. With your time. With your energy. With your explanations. With whom you allow to get under your skin. You begin to understand why older people were always saying, “Pick your battles.” They weren't surrendering. They had simply stopped breaking butterflies upon wheels.
And then there are the people. By forty, you have met enough of humanity to know that everyone has an angle, a history, a tender spot, and occasionally an axe to grind. You have met fair-weather friends. You have met wolves in sheep's clothing. You have met people who steal your thunder, people who move the goalposts, and people who will happily throw you under the bus before you have finished your morning coffee.
But you have also met the rare ones. The people who show up when the chips are down. The ones who know where the bodies are buried and love you anyway. The ones with whom you can let your hair down, drop your guard, and finally stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. Those people become fewer. And infinitely more valuable.
At forty, having a hundred acquaintances begins to feel considerably less impressive than having three people you could call at 2 a.m. Quality quietly beats quantity.
And perhaps the strangest thing about this decade is realizing how much of life happens completely outside your control. You can nail your colours to the mast. You can plan until you are blue in the face. You can dot every i and cross every t. And life can still throw a spanner in the works before breakfast.
Children grow up. Parents grow older. Friendships drift. Bodies change. Careers take unexpected turns. Passions change. People you thought would stay forever become ships that pass in the night. Plans go west. The best-laid schemes go awry. And suddenly you understand why people say there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip. Nothing is promised simply because it appears to be within reach. So you learn to make hay while the sun shines.
Wear the dress. Take the photograph. Book the trip. Eat the cake. Use the fancy China dishes. Say I love you while the person is still there to hear it. Stop saving the good perfume for some mythical occasion worthy of it. Life itself is the occasion. Because by forty, you have seen enough to know that the wheel turns.
Today's certainty can become tomorrow's memory. Today's heartbreak can eventually become the story you tell without your voice trembling. Today's disaster may turn out to have been a blessing in disguise.
Time has a peculiar habit of taking the gilt off the gingerbread and putting gold around things you once thought ordinary, like, a quiet morning, a healthy body, your children laughing in another room, your parent calling you, someone reaching for your hand without thinking about it.
There was a time when you wanted fireworks. But at forty, you begin appreciating lamps left on for you. Perhaps that's wisdom. Or perhaps you are simply tired. Either way, you stop sending owls to Athens. You stop embellishing what is already enough. You stop painting the lily. You become less interested in looking like you have a beautiful life and more interested in actually having one.
And yes, there are regrets. Roads not taken. Words not said. And some said in anger. People you should have held onto. People you should have let go much sooner. Chances you didn't take because you were keeping your powder dry when you should have been throwing your cap over the windmill. But regret, too, eventually has to be put in its place. You cannot spend the second half of your life crying over spilled milk from the first. At some point you must cut the Gordian knot.
Forgive yourself. Call a spade a spade. Take what you have learned. And cross the Rubicon. Because there comes a moment when the die is cast. You are no longer becoming the person you imagined at twenty. You are becoming the person who survived being her!!!
And maybe forty is when you finally stop waiting for a knight in shining armor. You realize you have been wearing your own armor all along. It has dents now. And scratches. More than one chink in it. But perhaps the objective was never to emerge from life unscathed. Perhaps the trick is knowing when the armor protected you and when it has started preventing anything from reaching you. So you loosen it. Piece by piece. You keep your own counsel when you need to. You wear your heart on your sleeve when it deserves to be seen. You stop casting bread upon waters where nothing ever comes back. You stop trying to bell every cat, fight every battle, mend every fence, and have the last word.
Some things can remain unfinished. Some people can remain unconvinced. Some doors can remain closed. Some questions can remain unanswered. And you can still be okay.
Because forty teaches you something your younger self would never have believed: You don't have to set the Thames on fire! You don't have to prove that you are extraordinary. You don't have to win every race, turn every head, or have everyone in the room understand you. Sometimes a good life is simply one in which you know which way the wind blows and finally have enough courage to sail whichever way you please.
