Are you heading towards your fiftieth birthday? Maybe it’s already passed for you? For many, 50 is a milestone age that can come with a lot of thoughts, emotions, and periods of self-evaluation. This can be a negative or a positive depending not just on where you are in life, but also on how you perceive yourself and what pre-determined notions you have about where you should or shouldn’t be.
I remember talking to a friend about my fiftieth birthday a couple of weeks after it occurred. When I was done telling her about the wonderful birthday dinner, the great workout I had, the alone time I treated myself to, etc. she had an interesting question for me. “Were you sad?” she asked. “Why, because I was still alive?” I joked. I knew exactly what she meant though. She was referring to what many people experience. That pre-determined ideal or where we should or should not be in life causes grief to many. The fact that I was currently single was a particular trigger for her. She admitted that that one fact all by itself would have made her sad.
You are not a number. There is no already written map of your life that tracks your exact route for you to gauge whether or not you are behind or ahead of pace. You cannot be off track because there is no track. Things will often not work out the way we expect them. We simply don’t have all the information to know what possible twists and turns, good or bad will take place. All we can do is have a good faith idea of where we want to go an what we want to accomplish and work to make those things happen. The actual rate or pace of them occurring will often be something that is outside of our control, and that OK. As a general rule of thumb, however, I’ve noticed that most things of worth and value take longer to achieve than we would predict or hope.
The beauty of following a fitness lifestyle is that it can be a great equalizer along our journey through life. It gives us so many positive things that can change the way our travels unfold. Fitness allows us to extend our functional ability. It keeps us healthier, more energized, more positive, more flexible, functionally stronger, and relatively younger than we would be without it. In a sense, it is slowing down time by effectively slowing down the rate at which we age. It gives us longer to complete our journey (barring anything catastrophic beyond our control) and this allows us to have a completely different outlook with expanded opportunities. A fitness practitioner will stare down 50 a lot differently than the average person.
There was no one degree of sadness when I turned 50! Now, I stare at 50 as a moment that is over ten years in the past. There is still no sadness or remorse and there never will be. No, everything in life will never be perfect, and that’s OK. Attack your life and opportunities with all the desire and passion that you have available. Use fitness as a tool to expand your quality time on this earth and as an anchor on your journey to help you control as much as you are allowed. Stare down 50, or 40, or 80 and be glad to see them. Any new age we reach is a blessing and an opportunity to still be a positive part of this world!
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