Member-only story
What I achieved in 40 years on planet earth
At 40, your life is just beginning!
Five years ago when I moved to Germany from Rochester, New York with a change of careers, countries, and language, 40 was the benchmark for me to set myself and my family in this new land. When I started this new goal, I felt old. Now I feel like the seed of maturity is just starting to sprout.
I came to Germany leaving two kids and my husband at our lovely Rochester home in the midst of a pandemic, to bless myself with a career that would not go obsolete with time.
Hailing from a nation where most people retire between the ages of sixty and sixty five, this sudden itch to start right over in your late thirties would be mocked at. Here it was drilled into our heads that the choice of a career path is a decision best made during the school going years. Learning here was reserved for the young. Also because one ruled out on what one can do or not just on the basis of subjects one chose after tenth grade.
In the tenth grade at the age of 16, one must decide on which streams of subjects to follow. If you were bright minded and high scoring, you would go in to take science, if one was lazy but still calculative and logical, commerce with math was a good option. The dumb and dumber were left with no other option outside the arts.