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3 Practices That Made Turning 50 The Best Time Of My Life
How to age gracefully
A few days ago, I received an invitation to join AARP, as if I needed a reminder about the impending confrontation with my 50th birthday.
Everyone keeps asking: how do you want to celebrate? It’s a big one — you need to do something special.
I get it. Fifty-years old. A milestone. The prime of middle-age. Still, I don’t want to make a big deal of it. A nice dinner with the family will suffice. The glitz and glamor of parties never appealed to me, not even in my youth.
That’s one of the greatest pleasures of turning fifty. You get to say, “I don’t give a sh*t” about all the crap you once lost slept over: popularity, fitting in with people you despise, flashy celebrations.
But not everyone reaches their sixth decade with peace of mind. It’s a time where many of my peers turn grumpy, recognizing their mortality, regretting their mistakes, and funneling all their frustrations into grievances. They become old-people caricatures reviled by the young and ridiculed by well-adjusted peers.
As young adults, we look at people like that and think, I’ll never become one of them. Yet, somehow, so many folks become who they once despised.
