Middle Age

Wading into the frigid waves at Stinson, clutching our boogie boards, Jonathan shouted to me:

"Middle age is weird!"

It is.

Each year we go to Stinson Beach outside San Francisco and dear friends rent houses up and down the beach and we form our own little community. We walk to each others houses, go on hikes together, play in the waves, drink too much wine and eat way too much delicious, locally grown, organic, divine food. We look at each other's kids and marvel. We get annual in depth updates on everyone--a tiny perfect snapshot of a year and what it has brought.

One thing we know: we are now officially middle aged. We are still energetic but life is made up of sick parents, kid concerns, health issues, job security and insecurity. Hair is going grey and we are looking deeply at the second half of our lives. No matter how we look or deceive ourselves, this can no longer be denied.

I like it.

I like what you see at Middle Age. I think of it as a big peak in life on the way up the mountain to the biggest peak that will be the end. Of course you can lift your head anywhere along the way, or hike out to a ridge. But mid life forces you there--no matter where you have chosen to look along the way.

We have all lived a long time with choices we made. At one time they seemed not so important. But now we have all lived with our choices for 15-20 years. These are choices about who to marry, how to treat family and friends, what kind of job we chose, how much money we made, who we hung out with, and the values we embraced along the way. Each decision felt small, but cumulatively it all begins to really show at middle age.

At 30 my best friends all felt like me. We were striving for greatness and to be great journalists. We felt similar--even if our differences were there. From that developed great cameraderie. But how, 15 years later, it all feels apparent. Some have chosen career, some family, some both. I love seeing what emerges. I mean I love it. We are all morality tales. Stories. Novels.

Our character traits have taken their toll. Our fears have led us one way, our bravery another. All the different aspects of our personality have played out.

And now we get a chance to stop, look around, and decide what next. We still have a lot to go--if we are lucky. But we have a chance to change direction, to go a new way, to pick a new career or a new way of being. It is not too late to change, but it will be hard.

But to me, life feels so rich.

I like the depth of middle age, the layers of being. I love seeing old friends I have known or many years and seeing how they turned out, what part of their 20 year old selves remain and what part was shed like a skin or an outfit of the age.

I feel like I am emerging from a long period of apprenticeship (working for a newspaper, working for an editor, trying to please whoever was paying my salary or was established in the world as a success) to a time of full fledgedness. It is a time to test myself, to take chances, to take all I have learned in this crazy life of mine and channel it in some unexpected way. It is my time to give back, to do something good for the world, to really be bold.

Perhaps this is just a blog fueled by too much espresso and a lot of sleep and the thoughtfulness that comes during a good vacation. Or perhaps it is true and when I am feeling weak and unfocused I can return here and remember what this time is all about.

I pray I choose boldness and dreams over fear.

What about you?