OMG, what a shameless self-help click bait. That was how I felt when I first saw that slogan somewhere. But somehow that slogan got stuck with me, and I see valuable insights. Yes, I’m approaching 40, but not quite close yet. I don’t think this is a self-serving rationalization of my own aging, but more of a trigger to put my thoughts on being and living into writing.

As suggested in the sentence, 40 seems like a dividing age in life. What exactly is special about it? I think life before 40 more or less follows a structured pattern for most people. Going through school, getting started in career, staring a family and raising kids. One may need to plan the implementation details of such a grand design schema, but we are not often confronted by the schema of life itself. Over the years, we have school mates, work mates, and friends. We reinforce the idea of normal living by measuring against each other, and everything seems fine. But there’s a turning point when kids leave home to school, when career almost peaks, when body strength starts to deteriorate. And more importantly, the question of what’s next sounds louder and louder. After 40, there’s no more pattern to follow. We are finally facing ourselves alone, and realize that we are responsible for our life decisions.

It’s about the age that one confronts the believe that life is an eternal, upward spiral of achievement. When one stands at the peak of their strengths looking downwards, it’s a scary dark path to the abyss. The world is filled with uncertainty. Good moments are precious, and often have more to do with luck than will. That’s probably the feeling of a midlife crisis. On the positive side, it’s a golden opportunity for renewing one’s contract with life, and renegotiating the priorities with a finiteness perspective. It’s no longer about possibilities or potential. It’s about working with reality, and experiencing the realness here and now.

So there’re two lives for everyone. The first is given. It follows from our original family and social environment, which we don’t really get to pick, but to live it, to endure it. The second is a choice. A choice to resume responsibility, to conceive our own world, and to create a self within.