“For some reason I feel like 50 is a more significant milestone in my life than just about any other age I’ve yet experienced. I find myself assessing my career, trying to figure out where I want to be in the next 5 and 10 years. I also realize that I’m comfortable in my skin. I know who I am, and I know what I will and won’t put up with. I know what I’m good at and what I suck at. And I’m fine with working with it all, and being honest with others about who I am. I think I’ve never been as comfortable being me as I am now.” — a friend
I dragged myself home today to a cool, quiet house peopled with cats staring off into the distance, then looked up the message where this quote was waiting.
I have several essays that address aging and change, but I haven’t ever put it out on the table quite this clearly as my friend did. Yet it’s all exactly as I feel, just a couple months shy of the half-century mark. I’m much more at peace with the direction of my life. I’m in a wonderful relationship — this fall will be our fifteenth anniversary. I have such good offers for projects and writing I have had to put some on hold. I have some opportunities, some of which will pan out and some will not. I have friends and mentors and mentees and family and neighbors; I’m part of something larger than me.
One of my biggest fears as a child was that I would grow up and be someone else. When I was 11, on a camping trip deep in Big Sur, a camp counselor reassured me, as we stepped through carpets of moist pine, this would not happen, that I would always be myself. He was kind enough not to laugh at me for asking the question. But on reflection, he was so young — he could not have been more than thirty — that he did not know the even better part of this equation: that when you get to a certain age, you get to be more of yourself than you ever have before.
Posted on this day, other years:
- Hiatus of a summer's eve - 2006
- On-a One Hand, On-a 'Nuther... - 2005
- The Good Neighbor - 2005
When I was growing up, I was really shy and didn’t fit in and I kept hoping that when I grew up, I’d become someone else and for a long time, during my 20s and 30s, I wasn’t and I was disappointed. Then, about 8 or so years ago, I realized suddenly that I was someone else, someone content and confident and yes, comfortable in her skin. I’m 54 now and feeling fine. I like to think that 50 is the new 40. 😉
I’m a few years off 50 but I find myself asking those same questions and being happy about the new me that I am. Thanks for helping me realise all this with this post.
I turned sixty 60 SIXTY in early June. My father never got to be 60. I am thinking about all these things, and more. It is hard to say. It is hard to get my mind around it. Some days I feel every single day of it. Some days only the thought of my 38-year-old son really reminds me that I am no longer 35.
I’m quoting this from memory, so I hope I get it right:
“All my life I wanted to be somebody. Now I realize I should have been more specific.” Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner
Dunderklumpen.
Never really appreciated the character til now. 🙂
Karen, I love that you didn’t want to be anyone but you when you grew up. What a wonderful realization at the age of 11! Like Shelly, I wanted to be someone else – confident, outgoing and I’ll admit it, stylish would have been right up there too – thanks to too many teen magazines.
Thanks to good mentors and role models who helped me make some good choices along the way, I’m here on the other side of 50 feeling confident (most days!) and comfortable about ‘me’. And isn’t that a great weight off one’s shoulders. So I may never get to “stylish”, but that’s ok too. 🙂
Polly, I wanted to be a lot of things — slim (I was a fat child), popular (I was quirky and alone), pretty (I was pimply with braces and hair that sprang out all over my head). But yes, you’re right, I didn’t want to be anyone else. Thanks for pointing that out… I hadn’t thought of it that way.