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MAN ABOUT LONDON |
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Suddenly, without warning,
you realize you're there
By ROBERT TAYLOR
of TheColumnists.com
When I was in my teens someone told me that the involuntary fart signified the onset of middle age.
I believed this until my late 20s, when I started involuntarily farting without feeling remotely middle-aged, and realised that I’d been fed false information as well as too many baked beans. In a way I was relieved (no pun intended) because I knew that I didn’t want to be middle-aged. In fact I couldn’t really understand how middle-aged people could be happy. Certainly I couldn’t imagine them having sex--an act for which they seemed hopelessly ill-suited.
But it did serve to get me thinking about what middle age might feel like, and how I might tell when it happened to me. These weren’t straightforward questions. The concept of middle age is completely man-made. It’s not like puberty, which involves identifiable physical change, or the menopause. It’s purely a means of categorising people.
Like many youngsters, I could spot a middle-aged person if I saw one, but couldn’t quite put my finger on what made them so. I was confused by the fact that their middle-age attributes were only partly to do with their age. After all a member of my family has been middle-aged since he was about 10 1/2, and one of my uncles, now 72, reckons he’s been middle-aged all his life. A good friend of mine--a fellow columnist--is described by his chums as the world’s oldest adolescent, still to experience young adulthood, let alone middle age. He’s 65.
Anyway, I stubbornly remained young as my 30th birthday came and went. And this despite my friends’ best attempts to speed up the whole process by buying me a pipe and a pair of slippers as birthday presents. Throughout my early 30s I continued to feel and behave like a young person.
Then finally it happened.
I became middle-aged on March 17 of last year, shortly after my 35th birthday. It happened when I was sitting in the bar of a cinema in West London with my fiancée. All around me there were these hip 20-somethings in their fashionable clothes, talking in their hip and trendy way. And there I was sipping half a lager in a woollen jumper, and feeling slightly podgy.
I was suddenly aware how much younger than me these other people were. Everything about them was different--their clothes, their tone of voice, the way their eyes darted about. They were like a bunch of flies, buzzing all about the place, while I felt like an old dog dozing in the corner.
But--and this was the defining moment--I felt perfectly content with myself and my station in life. “Happy” would be too strong a word, but “content” felt just right. I realised there and then (not weeks or months later) that I’d entered the world of the middle-aged. And it occurred to me that becoming middle-aged is, in a way, like dying of old age. When you’re young, the thought horrifies you. But when it actually happens, you find that you’re not just resigned to your fate, but ready for it. And it’s because you’re ready for it that it happens.
So now I know an answer to the question that puzzled me as a young person. What makes someone middle-aged is the ability to be content--to be happy with your lot, and your limited achievements. It’s a decisive moment.
There must, I suppose, be a downside to middle age--the opposite of contentment. Perhaps it’s indifference, or melancholy. I’m sure it can’t be anything as strong as unhappiness, depression or despair. Surely no middle-aged person would feel that strongly about something. That’s why the term “mid-life crisis” puzzles me. Crises don’t sit comfortably with my notion of what mid-life is all about, but I suppose as a new boy I still have a lot to learn. I’m even enjoying being forgetful as my brain fills up and overloads, so I guess I must be in the honeymoon period, excited by the novelty of it all.
Now the thought of being young again appalls me. Young people are just so desperately keen to impress each other. They’re so transparently insecure, and in such a mad rush to be successful and attractive, or to pretend that they don’t feel the need to be successful and attractive. Either way, it’s pretty ghastly. When I was a teenager, I still harboured a fantasy about one day being a Wimbledon champion. In my 20s I fancied myself as (depending on which day of the week it was) a world-famous actor, a chat-show host or a CEO of a multi-national. With ambitions like that you’re likely to end up disappointed.
I’m quite sure that if you could invent a contentedness measure--perhaps one that you had to stick in people’s ears to get a reading--you’d find that young adults come out pretty badly. There’s a saying in this country that youth is wasted on the young. But what’s so good about being young anyway? Other than firm buttocks.
As far as I see it, middle-aged people are better off materially and emotionally. Most of my middle-aged friends do an astonishing amount of stuff in the way of personal entertainment, dinners out and holidays--things that snotty-nosed youngsters can only dream about as they sip their milk shakes and try to look moody. And, contrary to my youthful assumptions, middle-aged people are very capable of having sex on a fairly regular basis.
Oh, and there’s one other thing that I’ve learned about middle age: your lack of certainty about things. In the world of the young, things are black and white, right and wrong. But the older you get, the less sure you are, and that in itself leads to more contentment. After all, what’s the point in struggling to change the world if you’re not really sure what changes to make? Yes, Jesus had saved humanity by the time he was 33, but from my middle-aged point of view, I have to ask whether he really knew what he was doing. Maybe he’d have been better off following Joseph into carpentry.
Yes, there’s no doubt about it--being middle aged is a good thing. No more need to prove anything to anyone--least of all to yourself. Life has stopped being like a roller coaster, and is more like a leisurely stroll in the park with the odd interlude for a pick-me-up dose of Viagra. I’m thoroughly enjoying it.
Of course I know that one day middle age will end, and old age will begin. I certainly hope it’s a good few decades away yet, because I’m not looking forward to it at all. I just can’t imagine how old people can be happy. And as for them having sex…well, just the thought of it is quite revolting.
©2004 by Robert Taylor. The illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA
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