The Final Countdown

In approximately 5 hours, my 30's will be over and I will enter my fifth decade of life.
I feel a sense of duty to acknowledge this milestone and I will with a celebration combining my birthday and my recent graduation on Sunday. If I had to do my 30's all over again, would I? I would say an unequivocal "No," but I wouldn't answer as quickly as I would if invited to re-live my 20's. Who the hell wants to do that again??
I feel that I have really grown into becoming the woman I knew I could be and was supposed to be, throughout the past decade. My teen-age years were filled with the requisite amount of angst, I made some life-changing, horrific mistakes in my 20's, and although I certainly made mistakes during the past decade, my vision has slowly become clearer and my picture of who I am and where I belong in the world is markedly sharper. I attribute most of that clarity to the last several years which I've spent in graduate school. While learning to become a therapist, it's inevitable that one review ones' life in therapeutic terms: What motivates me? How do I define happiness? How can I confront others with empathy? How do I respond to being confronted or critiqued? How gentle, comfortable, and accepting could I be with my feelings, and am I gentle, comfortable, and accepting with my feelings now? There are probably a dozen more examples I could give of how studying to become a therapist has prompted me to re-examine and re-frame my own life. Socrates believed that "the unexamined life is not worth living." I wouldn't go that far in support of internal insight, because I've met plenty of clients, fellow students, and other folks that spend so much time engaged in self-reflection that it quadruples their current anxiety, depression, obsessions, etc.
I'm happy to be turning 40 tomorrow. Happy because I'm still vertical and not "sleeping in eternal rest." Happy because I've come so far in re-establishing a life for myself after moving back to this area in 2002 when I was horribly active in my addition. And I'm probably most happy because I have a meaningful life surrounded by the unconditional love and support of family and friends and a career that I feel I have been "called" to do. Although I've struggled and survived heartbreaks, I've also relished in the joy of accomplishment, loving others and being loved in return, and knowing within my soul who I am and what I stand for.
Happy Birthday to me.

On the Precipice of 40

I will turn 40 years old in 29 days. Several of my close friends have already crossed this barrier into the unknown of "middle age." Does 40 even count as middle age anymore? If you listen to people in their 50s and early 60s, it doesn't. "Life begins at 40" has been a popular saying since the bulk of Baby Boomers began to turn 40 two decades ago. I think Baby Boomers latched onto that saying out of a shear sense of denial, which has defined much of the average Baby Boomer's existence.

One of the reasons I think turning 40 doesn't mean much more to me than any other birthday is the fact that I don't have children so I can't compare my lifetime milestones to theirs: I can't say, "Oh I remember when I started kindergarten" while watching my own 5-year-old hesitantly entering elementary school for the first time. I also can't say "Oh, I remember when I got my driver's license" as I watch my own 16-year-old tear out of the driveway. I don't have anything or anyone in my daily life to compare my aging process to, which in my mind keeps me thinking, "I don't feel like I'm 39 and 11/12, I feel like I'm 22." Which has both it's benefits and it's drawbacks. On this point I think I have inherited that Baby Boomer denial mechanism.

Being close to turning 40 has made me question some of my physical abilities, however. I often wonder if I don't feel like taking the puppy for a daily walk because I'm 16 years older than the last time I was responsible for walking a puppy, or if it's due to something more sinister like depression. It's hard to tell some days.

As I am a self-disclosed hopeless romantic and enjoy a heavy dose of schmaltz to mark certain milestones, I imagine I will do a lot of reflecting on my life thus far over the next 29 days. All I know for sure is that I have no regrets, because if I hadn't done what I did at any given time, I wouldn't be who and where I am today. Whether I'm 40, 20, or 60 years old, that much I know for sure.