Middle-Aged
My Sweet Dumb Brain had a profound thought that made me sad. She told the story about a cake that upset her father, joking about his age when he turned 40. She wrote: “He passed away in 2013, at just 58 years old. If life is a hill, he was already well on the other side when he turned 40. Maybe he knew that. No wonder he got mad.”
It’s such a strange idea. I think I’m middle-aged, but how can I know what the middle is if I don’t know the end? Perhaps my twenties were middle age, or I could still be a decade away from middle age if technology advances in such a way that the lifespan pushes on to 120.
It’s a lovely essay about what it means to age, gain wisdom, and change with time.
1 comment
I come from a line of 75% long lived people. Most of my relatives have made it into their late 90s. Cancer gets someone occasionally in their 60s. So I have pretty good odds of currently being middle aged. I always tell my children that I am immortal until proven otherwise though. Elizabeth plans to put something on my tombstone that says something like “not immortal after all.”
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