Reflections on Turning Forty and Above – 4 Things I Have Learnt



As you crawl into your early 40s, there is this treacherous yet domineering sense of bewilderment that creeps in as you try to take stock of the years you have lived on this gigantic rock, they call ‘the earth’. This might sound an overstatement to many but I feel positively daunted travelling back the timeline. Yes, it was a bumpy ride. Quite contrary to all precepts of a smooth sailing I had envisioned during the tender and formative years of early life, I realized most of my choices went compromised against a belligerent sense of competition. A great deal of this realization descended in episodes of fear, trauma, enfeeblement and a fleeting sense of footloose misgivings against all measures of self-actualization.

Though set out against this backdrop of puzzling prospects, my twenties were punctuated with resilience I needed to brave through the hard times. This resilience of that eventful age is the only thing I miss the most now that I have gone over the line into thick of my midlife.

Way back on my timeline, in my early twenties to be exact, there stands this young guy, fearless, ambitious and angry, all at the same time. I saw everything around from the vantage of freedom; yup, freedom of choice, freedom of movement, freedom of speech and above all the freedom to live as I willed. Oh Lord, that was the guy I loved in myself! Wish I could go back and give myself a big hug and tell, “Thank you for all your dynamism and persistence that has made me a success in my forties.” I strayed my loose foot into teaching as a profession back then but realized pretty soon that I was cut out for this trade. I loved impacting the minds. This choice readily settled in conjunct with my love for reading too. After twenty years into marriage and four lovely daughters to father, I have experienced my career in teaching a blessing all along. Exacting a teacher’s outlook to parenting beyond sentiments is something of a unique privilege that helped me build my kids’ confidence in educational endeavours.

Four things I have learnt along this leap from 20s into 40s



1. Emotional Budgeting

Of all the stark differences that tell me apart from that young guy in twenties is the fact that I have grown less responsive to my emotional appeals. Well, that doesn’t mean I have fossilized into a rock; only that I am saner and a bit too reliant on reason and logic instead. I, like most others of my age, believe more in analyses than a blind leap into action, a feature that ran deep into my veins back in the early stage of my career. It can’t exactly be told who inspired me into being so, nor can I pin it to a particular dot in the timeline when it happened; yet it happened and I realized that stealing a moment of poise against any emotional urge and surge can help you look better and seek more rewarding outputs. Whereas my early classroom interactions with students stood heavily pivoted to achieving the maximum with little compromise on meeting deadlines, I have grown more tolerant towards achieving less but more sustainable. And that has spared me the headaches I carried out of the classroom out of sheer emotional burnout.

2. Living the Present

A firm foot is what defines a middle-age guy against the footloose youngster heaving uncertain strides towards hazy horizons of ambition. Obviously I feel more secure and positively responsive to my professional and social habitat than I used to, especially during those years fanciful flights into the domains of unreality. Living the present is a phenomenal thing though underrated in its appeal, for all of us believe we do it every day, whereas our dissociation with the present stands utterly evidenced in our discomfort with our jobs and liabilities. To me, living the present moment means staying relevant to the surrounding imperatives of code and conduct with an inquisitive zeal of a learner and as a partner in achievable sets of joy and growth. Said that, I don’t mean looking back at that young guy with dissent and disrespect for suspending the present for imaginary flights into future; because without those imaginary doodles, I would not be able to own up my current strategic career path, reasonably straight and steady.

3. Identity is all about ‘becoming’

Assuming an identity for your own self while living among a motley of disparate crowds might sound just as agonizing as replacing your skin with a newer one almost every day. So, it is not at all enough to have been born with the fittest physicality that should qualify you for a human; instead, there is a plethora of other overly engineered societal and religious shades to imbue your persona and hem you in. so it is through this cacophony of maddening social appeals that you start stealing an existence for yourself, the one you can officiate as your identity. This struggle for self-actualization outlined most of my formative years before finally settling for teaching as a career choice, or a compromise, as you may call it. But, as I remember, it was this defining moment in career that set me up for a richer appreciation of my personal identity. I can’t adequately thank my younger self for fighting that immense battle against all frights of non-existence, and giving me a man who I am today, self-reliant and self-conscious.

4. The ‘could haves’ and ‘would haves’

Yes, that is how I like to feel about myself and hope many of us do when it’s about revisiting your past years, especially the ones that prefaced your current portfolios. Surely it was all about struggle and pain; yet, it’s the struggle that gives you the credible sense of achievement in your current bearings. However, more like a sage on the stage today, I feel adequately bent upon giving that youth of my twenties a piece of my mind to think in a way that could have made things more rewarding and less cumbersome. I can say it with more pronounced clarity that it would have been a lot better avoiding the over interplay of sentiments into my outlook on almost everything. I often wish traveling back in time to ask myself consider taking some coaching in the art of public speech, a skill I polished only when I got into teaching. Why did I remain silent for years? What held me back from saying my mind? These questions haunt me even today, and leave me feeling sorry for that young guy. I am sure he could have done immensely well in this trade, only if he willed to speak when it really mattered. With that picture of myself hung high in my subconscious, I am doing all I can to help my students hone this craft as a means to recompense my speechless youthful years.

With all that said, I still believe this meeting with my junior self will take on more meaningful dimensions as we both distance ourselves further in terms of years and mollycoddle our ages with all the very best coy smiles shot towards each other.







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