This year, 2024, most of my friends are entering their 40s. I will celebrate my 40th in 2 months.
Becoming 40 is an interesting milestone. Throughout your 30s your mind tells you that you are still not too far from your 20s and that you are still “young”.
Then suddenly you hit 40 and you know that now you are closer to 50. This means you are getting old. Suddenly you feel this wave of thoughts about retiring, growing old, financial stability, medical insurance etc.
I guess that is because as humans we find it hard to conceive a life which is as fun as it was in our 20s or 30s during our 50s and onwards. We cannot conceive that life can indeed become more and more interesting as we age. I too find it hard and hence this post.
So I want to take a moment and stand on this dividing line and look back on the last two or three decades – my teens, my twenties and my thirties- and the next decades – 50s, 60s and beyond. As I enter my 40s, I am indeed stronger on all fronts – material, emotional, and hopefully physical too- than my earlier days. I have far more clarity about what I want to do in life and what I want to avoid. I know what pursuits give me happiness in life and those that suck my energy.
If I stop and observe, then I can see that I should look forward to growing old and enjoying life without worrying, rather than pursuing aimless goals.
There is something unique about the experiences we knowingly and unknowingly learn as we go through life and those are skills which are hard to write down on a resume of Linkedin profile. These experiences change the core of who we are but often we ignore that part of us. It is indeed hard but I really hope to draw strength from that part of me.
As I observe the people around me who too are entering their 40s, I see largely two groups of people. Some have accepted the routine nature of life and carried on, while some have chased their calling and gone to whatever extent it was required to achieve that calling. Some have achieved non-linear success early, and some have stayed in the middle of the bell curve. I am no one to judge. To each its own. I do hope that everyone find happiness in whatever their life path is.
But there is also a third kind. I think I am in that tribe. These are people who are carrying on on the path that life has assigned them for now, but still there is a fire burning to chase something different, something else, something that cannot be described in words, something that is not what is there right now, something that calls them but they do not know from where. Something.
This something is dangerous for it can make a sane person go insane. But this something can also make life worth it by promising a future which is dramatically happier than the present today. I have been chasing this something for many years now.
As I enter my 40s, I have this quiet, still, but solid feeling that the best time is now in front of me. Yes, I will be closer to 50s, 60s and I am biologically deteriorating with every passing day. But mentally, I am far more evolved and lightweight. In a way, time is relative, and it passed quite fast in last two decades as I chased things. But time is slowing down, and it will pass slowly as I enter in the next phase of my life.
All I have to do is pause every now and then, look behind at all that is gone and accept it, and look forward to all that will come and accept it.
On life and time 