On Being Forty

One day, unless you have already passed this milestone, you will turn the big 4-0. You will know it's coming and maybe have even braced yourself for it, but somehow, it will still surprise you with its suddenness. As you are minding your own business, doing the laundry, tweezing your eyebrows, packing the school lunches, at some point you will turn around and discover that you have just wrapped half your life and the questions, "What have I accomplished?" and "What should I do with the other half of my life?" will start to keep you up at night.

Additionally, wondering what eye cream and other anti-aging products one should use at this juncture will also take up an inordinate amount of inner dialogue and emotional space in your heart. I'm a little ashamed to admit that, but there it is.

My mother, in her familiar wisdom, keeps telling me that "it's just a number." I know this, but it still feels like a life monument of some sort. And, even though I try to tell myself that "forty is the new thirty," I can't decide if this is denial or not.

So, the question lingers, "What am I going to do now?" Because, with that turn of the calendar, there is an urgency that appears, a sense of time speeding up, of second chances being fewer and of every choice carrying just a little more weight than it did before.

I feel less angst than I did in my twenties and thirties. And yet, I can't help but still feel a nagging at the back of my mind that I need to figure some things out now that I have presumably made it to the middle of my life.

So far, I haven't figured anything out.
But, I did make a short To-Do list, because I'm good at lists. Here it is:

Grow in Wisdom 
Do the Things that Matter 
Create Something Beautiful 
Beat Back Suffering
Learn How to Rest

Honorable mention goals: make better snack choices, stop reading celebrity news, and call my grandma once a week.

Other suggestions for living a better life as a middle-aged person are welcome.

                                                                                                           Where I'm currently doing my pondering.