Midlife. And dare you call it a crisis !

As I brace to strike another year off my 40s this July, I sometimes stop on my tracks to catch my breath as the fastest decade of my life yet, zooms by . Growing up, while we keep hearing unsubstantiated rumours about life’s asymmetric acceleration when we get older, we often don’t get time to pause and reflect on a decade while we are in it, because the fast changing landscape around us keeps us engaged and distracted .

Then, forty comes along. And suddenly the world slows down while your age speeds up. Suddenly you start noticing that you are the oldest person walking towards the office elevator and people are actually holding the door open till you get in. Suddenly head hunters start sending you polite messages that say you are ‘overqualified’ for the job you were interested in. Suddenly you do not remember phone numbers by heart anymore. Suddenly you need to be reminded names of people you met only a month ago. Suddenly your knee refuses to participate in your favourite 26 mile event, and you settle for a compromised sport . Suddenly you realize that with each passing year, you have more people in your life who have moved out from this world to the next, leaving you a little colder, a little lonelier than the year before.

 In many ways, the forties are the crossover years in an individual’s journey – the decade of existentialism where you have shed your youth, but not donned your greys yet. Depending on how you look at them, these can be your worst years as you let go of your life energy ,submit to the flow, and wait for the finale. Or they could be the best years of your life where you show up in peak form - physically, intellectually and emotionally, sharp enough for combat , hungry enough to win, wise enough to know the right combats to pick, and the ones to let go.

Therefore it makes sense to hit the pause button once a year and record your thoughts as you pass through this paradoxical decade. Sometimes you will get bored at your new consistency. And once in a while you will surprise yourself with an insight which might have grown in you when you were looking elsewhere, busy playing life.

So here’s my list – realizations at intermission from a reset and recalibrated life of someone I used to know when I was twenty.

1. Respect the energy of youth and the wisdom of the elderly. You don’t possess enough of either now.
2. Embrace your perspective. Stop believing in absolutes. Stop looking for coherence in this fortuitous, impermanent & random life. The past appears like a rounded story only in hindsight, but it was just as chaotic as your present is and as invisible as your future seems like, while it was unfolding.
3. Twenty five years back, a newspaper (in India) cost Rs 2.50. Today it costs Rs 3.50. Not a linear rise in price for sure. Someone out there must be financing the hidden cost of producing all that news. Stop believing in sponsored opinions fed by the media .
4. Keep score. Write your own obituary, the way you would like to be remembered. Read it every night before you go to bed.
5. Say sorry sometimes. Not all the time.
6. This is the decade when you get to recognize the imbeciles and dorks in the political system. And also learn how to tolerate them.
7. In Victor Hugo’s words, 40 is the old age of youth. You still have time to get started on that bucket list. But hurry up.
8. Once you cross 40, you realise that are no grownups out there. It is all a real time role play. Each of us is taking a shot at it. Some of us wing it better than the others, that’s all.
9. By the time you cross 40, you realise that a soulmate is not a pre-existing person waiting for us beyond the horizon like in a Rumi’s couplet , but rather, it is a person we uncover as we grow older – in someone else, as well as in ourselves. Love at first sight is often impulsive, hormonal & stupid. Love is something that needs to grow & transform over time and circumstances.
10. Here on, you can never ‘out-workout’ a bad diet. And it’s perfectly fine if you can’t have those washboard abs anymore. Mark my words, imperfect people are more popular. And way more happier.
11. A person who is nice to his boss, but rude to the janitor, is not a good person.
12. You don’t need to win every argument that is tossed at you anymore. Sometimes, ignoring idiots and walking away is the best form of combat when you get older. That’s the beauty of the 40s.
13. Stop fearing evil glances or envious people now. ‘A vulture’s curse never kills the cattle’ – Old Indian saying.
14. Don’t buy skinny jeans. Donate your light colored suits. No one might tell you so, but they make you look silly.
15. Observe people beyond their titles, religion and skin tones. Mostly, people are the same - all over. They have the same aspirations, fears, dreams and weaknesses just like you.
16. Stop boring people with tales of your “good old days”. Nostalgia, beyond a particular point, gets terribly irritating. Especially someone else’s nostalgia.
17. Appreciate talent and give generous encouragement. There is nothing more wasteful than noticing and getting impressed with someone’s work / art / personality - and YET, NOT passing on the feedback.
18. Be humble. Time follows its own queer cycles. It takes only one generation (sometimes, not even that) for fortunes to go for a walk.
19. Don’t confuse humility with false modesty. Be completely aware of your faculties and your strengths just like you are aware of your shortcomings.
20. If someone is making a special effort to ignore you, it means that you are pretty important for him.
21. Bad leaders feel contempt for those who fear them and a deep resentment for those who don't. I am sure you are not like that anymore . Or are you ?
22. By 40, you need to appreciate that leadership is a team sport. A good leader is the most cohesive and collaborative person in the room. I am sure you get that by now. Do you ?
23. “Missing a train is painful only if you run after it” – Taleb. The 40s is the decade when you need to define your own version of success, instead of following someone else’s, and failing.
24. There are things we know that we know, things we know that we don’t know. And then there are things that we don’t know we don’t know. The problem with domain experts is that they don’t know what they don’t know. Once in a while it makes sense to take a view of a non-expert.
25. It’s okay if you don’t like classical music.
26. Bold is sexy.
27. Surprise others once in a while. Surprise yourself once in a day.
28. Do one good deed a day. And forget about it. Avoid one temptation a day. And remember to remind yourself about it the next morning.
29. Set aside a day in your week ( any day) when you won’t criticize or complain. About anything or anyone.
30. Start forgiving people. Given an option to be either right or kind, choose to be kind. Kindness is getting scantier by the day in today’s ‘right’ world. Forgive, smile and let go.
31. Once a day let someone else tell her story. Once in a while let someone else be the hero. Step back, smile and clap with all your heart.
32. Try and win over some detractors every now and then. They can sometimes become your closest allies. No enmity is worthy of permanence.
33. Your calendar never lies. Your days are your life in miniature. Like they say – If you miss your workout for a day, no one will notice. If you miss it for three days, you will notice. If you miss it for a week, others will notice.
34. Beyond a certain point , your family will be all you’ll have. Treat them well. Often, while caught up in the drama of life, we fail to notice that our parents are packing up for their next journeys , our kids are quietly growing up and becoming strangers .
35. You do more on days you choose to slow yourself down. You win more on days you choose to compete less.
36. “The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future” – Kahneman. Part of growing up is to cultivate a sense of wonder in ourselves, a belief that there are still some ‘Wow’ moments waiting to be discovered out there . In others. In ourselves.
37. Human beings, by nature, are designed for stability and coexistence. This whole discourse on disruption is overrated and temporary . It will soon pass. And life will go on.
38. “If 50 million people say something foolish, it is still foolish.” - W. Somerset Maugham
39. Once a month, lock away your cell phone over the weekend. And stop worrying that the world might end because you are not saving it from your phone, or email or social media.
40. It’s finally that decade of your life when you need to be the best you, not the second-best someone else. And feel good about it.
41. Till your 30s, it was about the size of the dog in the fight. Here on, it is all about the size of the fight in the dog.

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