I’m not usually one for paying attention to modern aphorisms, sayings, affirmations (you see, they aren’t even formed enough to fit into or constitute a discrete category). I tend to lob them all in a big mental bin labelled “live, laugh, oh f**k off” and go about my day.
But last week, the algorithm, possibly aware – in that malevolent, profoundly disturbing way it has – that my birthday – in that malevolent, profoundly disturbing way it has – is approaching, recently delivered unto me a random person’s random thought that has crept under my defences like a burr under a vest.
Yes, despite it being printed in a handwriting font across a windswept coastal landscape, I have been unable to stop cogitating upon the following would-be adage (or maxim? Apercu? HELP ME): “Mid-life is just becoming who you were again at 16 but loving her this time.”
Now, in some ways I hope that this is simply a new and temporary vulnerability to guff. Another twist in the perimenopausal rollercoaster. Hormones go haywire, you go a bit mad, they settle, you are restored. Life’s rich pattern and HRT patches, innit.
On the other hand – I think this piece of guff might actually be just… guff-adjacent? More than that, perhaps. It might even be true. And it might not be a bad thing if it is.
I have certainly since breaching 40 come to realise that there are parts of me, parts of us all, that are simply immutable. And since breaching 50 nearly two years ago, that realisation has been on a steep upward climb towards acceptance. Sometimes it is of small things; I like winter over summer, I have permanent JOMO instead of FOMO (joy rather than fear of missing out respectively), and indeed DINBI (delight in not being included, which I have just coined and am thinking of bringing to a windswept landscape stock photo near you ASAP).
Sometimes it is of larger things, like the fact that I am a naturally anxious person (not, incidentally, a person with anxiety or an anxiety disorder, but simply someone who is what we used to call “a worrier”) and that I should book some time in to each and every one of my days for catastrophising and then go about the rest of it unimpeded by guilt for being so useless.
And that, maybe, is where we begin to get to the real nub of the matter. Because the deeper truth behind this anonymous comment on mid-life is that it is the age and stage at which you stop hating yourself. More specifically, it is the age and stage at which you unlearn the lessons about hating yourself that you have been taught perhaps since before you were even old enough to go to school.
There is a reason the writer of that phrase refers to “loving her this time”. Boys aren’t taught to hate themselves. At least, not the ones that have reached or are now reaching mid-life – I think things may, unfortunately, be different for the generations coming after them. The manosphere, like any toxic cult, trades on cultivating insecurities in its target demographic and proffering apparent solutions even as it undermines consumers further to keep the money coming.
It is the dark twin of the diet industry’s historical tactics aimed at their female base. I say “dark” because by either nature or nurture, men caught up in this process tend to externalise rather than internalise that self-hatred and poison an entire society instead of harming only themselves, like women overwhelmingly did and do. We’re so thoughtful! And after the bingeing, purging and starving, slim too!
But for women rather than men my age, the idea of looking back at yourself at any age and finding her acceptable sounds radical. The idea of treating her with kindness, of incorporating her into your current self-image, of distinguishing between genuine flaws of character and simply what your parents, teachers, magazines, boyfriends, bosses and society at large found unacceptable is quite the leap.
We’re used to looking back at photographs, of course, and discovering that our faces and figures of 10 or 20 years past that so sickened us at the time were, in fact, wholly unobjectionable and oftentimes even quite appealing. To discover that the internal equivalent is also true can send you reeling.
So, on my birthday I intend to drink to excess (I think this straddles the divide between something generally disapproved of and an actual character flaw appropriately) and contemplate life from this new vantage point. If I have moved from ignorance, to better understanding of myself and now approach acceptance – what lies ahead?
A fall from this rocky crag into a roiling sea of punishment? Or does another, even higher peak present itself? Mount Two Decades of Joyful Revelling Until a Quick and Painless Death, are you out there?
The clouds have not yet parted. But I have hope.
Lucy Mangan’s Substack newsletter is The Bookwormery
Hence then, the article about the biggest lesson i ve learned from my 50s and how it made me happier was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( The biggest lesson I’ve learned from my 50s – and how it made me happier )
Also on site :