Spectator by Seema Goswami: Embrace your age, at every age
You don’t need to think wistfully about time gone by as you grow older. Each decade brings fun firsts, new milestones. Keep your years open
There are many dispiriting things about getting older. Your joints creak, your brain slows , your eyesight weakens, your hair thins, your waist thickens. But what I find most dispiriting of all is how there are so few firsts in your life after you hit your forties and fifties.
When you are young, life is an endless series of firsts. Babies grow their first tooth, eat their first solid food, take their first step, say their first word. As they grow older, they have their first day at playschool, then at kindergarten, and then in proper school, followed, in good time, by their first day in college. As teenagers they have their first crush, their first date, their first kiss, their first big love, and their first heartbreak.
Even entering into adulthood means notching up a fair amount of firsts. There is the biggie of course: Your first job, which provokes equal amounts of enthusiasm and trepidation. If you are fortunate enough, you probably have your first serious relationship around this time, which may or may not culminate in your first marriage (and, with a bit of luck, your last as well). You buy your first car (or motorbike), get your first medical insurance policy (though you are still listed as a dependent on your parents’ plan!), and go on the first vacation that you pay for yourself.
Your thirties are the time when the most significant firsts happen. If you haven’t been hitched as yet, this is when you finally bite the bullet and say yes to the ring. This is when most people would have their first baby, sign on a mortgage for their first flat, put together their first investment plan (and other such grown-up stuff).
But by the time your forties roll on, the era of the firsts is well and truly over. And even the few firsts that occur are not exactly good news. If you among the unlucky ones, this may well be when you notch up your first divorce. But even those blessed with marital bliss will discover their first white hair around this time, the first sign that their youth is well and truly behind them. Their first pair of bifocals will follow shortly, putting them squarely in the middle-aged category.
And what firsts do we have to look forward to in our fifties? Well, there’s always the first colonoscopy and perhaps, the first diagnosis of hypertension or type 2 diabetes. But this may also be the first time you experience the highs and lows of being an empty nester as your kids grow up and fly the coop. But whatever joy you experience as you rediscover the delights of life a deux will be tempered by the first intimations of your parents’ mortality.
Don’t be disheartened though. Your sixties will bring with them the next lot of fun firsts. That may be the birth of the first grandchild (or grandniece or grandnephew), heralding the start of a bright new generation to take over from the old fogeys. You will finally be able to retire from that job that has taken so much out of you and experience for the first time in decades the feeling of freedom from routine. Your entire day will be yours to do as you like, and that’s a first I can get on board with.
