Middle age and compromise- The GREY area (literally)

Middle age and compromise - Dinow

It’s always on your birthday that you become philosophical

You’ve got a full day to face your mortality, sins, handicaps, shortcomings, and failures…. All in a negative way! Why? Because it’s one of those rare days when you’re not running forward, when the petty, superficial, irrelevant things of your routine do not divert you.

So what’s new this year? The GOLDEN 50! More than half of your life unless you’re counting on reaching 100!

It dawns on you that for the first time you dare to show your crappy mood to everyone. You don’t deny to yourself or others that you’re not happy about getting older and….guess what? For the first time you don’t give a damn about hurting anyone’s feelings. So they leave you in peace (only older people understand your mood; the disgustingly younger ones are more or less offended.)

What has changed?

You’ve always been a black or white, love or hate kind of person and…arrogant! Yes! Admit it! The arrogance of Youth? Assuredly. For a Yes or No, you were ready to jump to the defense or to wring the neck of anyone who’d have the temerity to question your “Idea”. So when did the grey invade your beliefs, ideas or perceptions?

You wake up one day on the thought that it’s been more than a week since your last fight, heated discussion, argument with your darling spouse, you choose; that you haven’t been irritated by your mom’s remarks as much as you used to do and, on the contrary you even managed to end your telephone conversation on a peaceful note. What’s happening with you? Are you coming down with some alien illness, developing some freaky bi-polar/schizophrenic sort of syndrome? It’s so totally not you!

Your hubby is looking at you keenly with an “I- don’t- want-to worry- but-she’s-been-too-mellow-these- past-few-days” expression. Your mom has been unduly solicitous about your health, now that you think of it.

Dare I say that around the glorious age of 40 you become “tired”? You expected me to say “wise”? Not a chance!

I think that we lie to the world and ourselves when we think that we’ve become wiser. Certainly not at 40! Maybe later, around 55 or 60 when we’re so tired of fighting everyone around us, mainly our family that we surrender, abdicate, lay down the arms to Forces- Holier- Than- THOU!

By then we become wiser because we finally understand that it’s a lost battle.

By the time you stop fighting your own parents, your children have started fighting you. Nobody wins. You’re powerless to change anything and the “IF” of our friend Rudyard Kipling won’t correct the wrongs you did to your mom and dad or prevent the ones your kids are perpetrating against their beloved ones.

So embrace your newfound friend “compromise” and earn some peace around your house and family and accept the fact that you can’t always win and be liked by every single person you know.

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