Turning Fifty: 50 Thoughts about Living from Five Decades of Life
I turned fifty today.
By tomorrow, I’ll start telling anyone who asks my age that I’m 51. I began doing this three years ago to prepare for each upcoming birthday and any psychological issues I might want to entertain from aging.
So far so good.
Last night, I brainstormed what I learned in the past five decades. Here they are. Just fifty thoughts, as they popped into my brain. No extra organization or categorization was done. After all, my brain is a mess of contemplations… Always.
1. The sun comes out tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then the day after that, or the next, or the next.
2. Turning inward is a good thing. It allows for the discovery of quiet, solitude, and tranquility in a turbulent world.
3. Be your own best friend. Hey, if you can’t live with yourself, who can?
4. Iguanas may seem to be ugly creatures, but if you study them long enough, they become beautiful teachers.
5. Turning off one’s phone is necessary for personal sanity and survival.
6. Be addicted to learning. It’s exiting, transformative, and delays mental decline.
7. When others hate you, let them. They need to travel their own pathways. Everyone can’t love you all the time and you cannot force love.
8. Love is just as much a choice as hate. Both are easy to do. Just choose love. Please.
9. Starting over is a transcendent experience. Embrace each opportunity for a re-start.
10. Less is more and a little will always be enough.
11. Don’t kick the back of other people’s chairs. And when your children do it chronically from their car seats make up a silly song that you sing out loud. This promotes laughter instead of annoyance.
12. It’s okay to let your two-and-a -half-year old walk into the bank barefooted. He’ll keep his shoes on after that. You’ll only tie those laces once per day until he can tie them himself. If you survive the assault of all the onlookers threatening to report you.
13. Being supremely calm with your children is a sure way to scare them. Not that that’s the intention, but when you’re visibly and audibly angry, they know they have some wiggle room. There is no coming down from calmness.
14. Parenting serves two purposes: To shine light on one’s own imperfections and to cultivate children to do the following: become self-reliant and independent and humane. We need both for growth and evolution.
15. Hydrogen peroxide and baking soda are best for oral hygiene. Along with floss and a tongue scraper of course. I’ve not yet had a crown or a root canal and I don’t want either one.
16. Fresh lemon or lime juice is really great for the skin. Use regularly anywhere that wants to wrinkle or sag.
17. Pooping is priceless. Don’t lose the ability. Take care of your digestive system.
18. Follow your calling, even if you don’t know the exact dimensions of it, or how exactly to fulfill it.
19. Treasure freedom. It’s easy to allow it to be taken away in relationships, and through work and worry.
20. Physical activity is great for clearing the head and for stress management in general. A simple walk can go a long way.
21. When people don’t see you, enjoy your anonymity. Consider the worth of the moments when no demands are made of you @#yourname.
22. Serve selflessly when you can and when you can’t know that it’s okay.
23. Celebrate your $1 lottery winnings as though you won $10 million. It’s fun and quite contagious if you do it around other people. Why not share your winnings by spreading laugher and good cheer.
24. Get up out of your seat every hour and move. It’s therapy for weak muscles, nerve damage, and joint pain, and it promotes pooping.
25. Keep acknowledging how talking about pooping is as easy as talking about the weather. No-one cares because you’re fifty and that’s what fifty-year-olds do.
26. It’s really uplifting to gain the attention of suitors half one’s age. It reminds you that beauty is different, not diminishing with time.
27. When no-one else is home, celebrate parading about (indoors) in the Emperor’s or Empress’ new clothes.
28. Friends are gifts. You only need a few very close ones. Regularly, you will only have time and energy for a few very close ones.
29. Time is an exhaustible resource. It cannot be replicated. Don’t waste it.
30. Keep your accounting short. Apologize quickly, and judge not, knowing that the first stone could just as easily be aimed at you.
31. Let go of those who consistently do not appreciate you. They will appreciate you after you’re gone. Either way, personal freedom is a treasure.
32. Tell the truth. It does more than set you free.
33. Honor time for sleep. Who knew it was such a luxury?
34. An apple a day is still beneficial. Pomegranates are also good and supremely delicious. Unfortunately, they are more costly too.
35. Life is irrevocably altered when you parent children with an incurable disease, or have a spouse or parent with irreparable injuries or illnesses.
36. When your heart is broken and your spirit is crushed, press on anyway. The sun comes out tomorrow…
37. When your children hate you, let them. It’s usually temporary and they need to journey through their own feelings to come to terms with them.
38. Be patient with yourself. Be patient with others. Be patient with life. Control what you can and let go of what you cannot. Acceptance is the first measure of mental health and progress.
39. Show respect to others even when angry or hurt by them. You are always a role model for someone else. What will you teach them when you show disrespect?
40. Live peaceably with others. Life is too short.
41. Give hugs in abundance. Solid, tight ones. They are great medicine for life’s ailments. No words necessary.
42. Set your default to kindness.
43. Choose wisely who you permit into your life and be discerning about what you say to whom.
44. Refuse to give anger a foothold. Bitterness and resentment are ugly garments.
45. Read daily.
46. Write often. If you don’t write, paint or compose. Do something — anything — creative.
47. Laugh every waking hour.
48. Love your body. It’s the only one you’ve got.
49. Have and exercise good ethics and moral standards.
50. Live with integrity, even if living in a world filled with pretense.
