Whoever Said Life Begins At 40? It Begins When You Want It To!

We are often told about the ‘mid-life crisis’, ‘the big 40’, and other claims of life beginning at 40. But here is a woman taking charge of her life when she wants to!

We often hear “Life begins at 40.” My mind too has been conditioned to be fascinated with this phrase for long. Now that my countdown to 40 has begun, I have been thinking, “So, have I been waiting to turn 40?”

Well, I have been on the go throughout. Stumbling, fumbling, getting up, brushing the dust off my jeans, standing tall, getting ready again, ducking the bouncers, getting hurt and prepping up again. Yes, I feel I am yet to hit it straight out of the boundary lines but who said you can’t score a century with singles.

Most times I still feel I was naive to trust people, but that’s one trait I have still not been able to change. I have loved people selflessly, made friends for keeps, but not without expectations. But I raised my own expectations of them, been hurt and erased the expectations only to move on with life.

As contradictory as it may sound, I have been selfish too. I have been vengeful but quick to realise vengeance doesn’t work. So I learnt to be forgiving and learnt to let go.

Yes, I have had some bad days when I questioned my purpose of living. Some days I felt I didn’t deliver the best. While on others, I felt like no one could have done it better. I have had some real highs in life and I have thanked myself for giving myself that one chance.

I fought my battles, small as they might be

So, I can proudly say I have fought and made up.

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And I have stumbled and stood back.

I have given up and taken chances again.

And I have been hurt and loved back.

These are not big battles with some great purpose but they have been my own little battles with myself which shaped my life. Battles that helped me introspect, helped me be more resilient, helped me to come out of my dogmatic ways of thinking.

I always wondered, would life suddenly be OTT after 40 or would I suddenly be more wise? Or would I be insecure about it with mid life crisis?

Little did I know…

Life was OTT when I was all of 5 or 6- just carefree. That is going to be the happiest I have ever been.

And the moment you learn to accept your mistakes is when you will be the wisest.

I had no mid-life crisis at 40

My mid life crisis didn’t wait for me to turn 40. It hit me in my late 20’s when I was struggling to balance my work, home, kids. And somewhere I lost myself.

Today, at 40, I am much calmer.

I did not wait to turn 40 to start living my life. Being a little self centred, bringing my friends back into my life who I had lost while I was going through the mid life crisis helped me gain back my sanity.

To me, age is just a number

I am not waiting to turn 40 to either sulk about it or finally have a go at life. There are no 10 things on my bucket list to tick before turning 40.

Neither is there any advice I would want to give a younger one before I turned 40.

There is no going back and undoing anything I have done in the past to make a better life at 40.

I will just try and keep a count of the number of lives I have touched in a way that they are always going to remember me.

And I will not let that begin at 40!

#Unconventionally_Yours

Picture credits: Pexels

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