I turned fifty in the middle of a pandemic. I am not the only person who experienced a milestone while on quarantine and mine is hardly all that significant. Nonetheless it was a milestone that I had envisioned welcoming with a European vacation and a large party. Instead, I had dinner at my sister’s house and we talked about not getting Covid.
Your twenties are a waiting game. You are waiting to be an adult, to get married, to start your career. You are dying for your life to “begin”, blissfully unaware that your life, in fact, already started.
Your thirties are about building your team. You pick partners, dogs, children, jobs, homes, cities. You build a framework that you feel is optimized for the long haul — careers start solidifying, relationships gel, patterns are established. You finally start feeling like you really understand life and you’re going somewhere.
Your forties is a period of evaluation. Did I pick the right team members? Do I need to make a trade? Is this the career path I envisioned for myself? The midlife crisis isn’t a crisis as much as it is an “Oh shit I’m stuck with this and I’m running out of time”. You start working out (because that crunch in your knees is getting louder and you can’t bend your shoulder like you used to). You get divorced, or fine-tune your marriage in counseling, you switch careers or go back to school. You move cities or buy a new house. You optimize because the second half of your life is looming in front of you and suddenly the clock ticking is very loud.
And then I turned fifty and I was given a surprise. The third act. When I hit forty the thinking was that it is all “downhill” from here, but that’s wrong. Not only is it not downhill but you have the freedom to do the next thing. Always wanted to learn to skydive? Well you now have the resources to do that. Want to learn Italian? You can. I realized for the first time that I no longer needed somebody’s permission to chase passions and dreams. I didn’t need to wait for the “perfect” time because that time is now. I’m not too old to start something new. In fact, I’m the perfect age to start something new because I now have the wisdom, knowledge, and the resources to do that new thing. Failure isn’t scary because you have fifty years of failure and know that it doesn’t kill you.
Shortly after turning 50 I woke up, turned to David in the early morning and said, “don’t laugh at me but I think I’m going to write a book”, to which he replied, “why would I laugh at that? You should absolutely do that”.
Welcome to my third act.
