When my mom turned 40, her coworkers surrounded her desk with black balloons.
It was a morbid way to acknowledge a milestone birthday, but that’s how people felt about middle age in the late 90s. 40 meant you were “over the hill,” which, I guess, means peaked? On your way down? Heading toward death?
Now that I’m 40, that sounds ridiculous.
By the time my mom turned 40, Gen X was already shifting the narrative. They’d started to move the black-balloon, over-the-hill commemoration to age 50. Not because people en masse were living to 100 years old, but because 40 was beginning to feel so young, regardless of how much time you had left after it. Now a big chunk of my millennial cohort are in our 40s, and “millennial” still has a ring of youth to it (to my ears…).
No one got me black balloons this year. No one is calling me “over the hill.” It would be absurd, because, look at me; I’m basically still a child. 💁
I’ve been referring to myself as “nearly 40” for about five years already, so actually turning 40 — and, for the next 10 years, being in my 40s — doesn’t carry the kind of weight I expected it to. But, as I’ve started an entire project around it, this age apparently means something to me.
Statistically, I’m nearly halfway through my life. Psychologically, that makes 40 a big deal. Physiologically, my body seems to be in cahoots with the over-the-hill narrative; my joints are achier, my periods are lighter, my sex drive has finally got the memo that I don’t want to be impregnated and I get tired just from the amount of thinking I do in a day.
Women a few years older than me are talking about perimenopause, but I’m not there yet. I’m grateful to have this information out in the open so I don’t have to figure everything out on my own when I get there. But at 40, more than navigating a drastic bodily renaissance, I’m crossing a new portal in the labyrinth of my identity. I’ve gained enough distance from the person I discovered in my 20s and enough experience living as various versions of her to see what I might want to leave behind and what I might want to take into my next 40 years.
I likely have at least twice as much adulthood in front of me as behind me. When I look at what I’ve done and learned in my past 20 years, that makes me very excited for my next 40. I continue to accumulate knowledge, understanding and wisdom as I go, and to shed insecurities and, as we millennials say, give fewer f*cks. I accept that the world no longer expects me to be hot, so I don’t have to worry about projecting hotness ever again — what freedom! I’m getting better and better, so how exciting is it to think what I might do with this remaining time?
That’s how I’m feeling as I turn 40.
I feel like I’ve earned this optimism with the work I’ve put in the past 20 years. I truly feel like I’ve earned a turning-point, optimistic year after the slog of the past five pandemic-era years, the past decade with Trump. This cultural darkness has coincided a little too neatly with seasons of my life and reinforced everything I might have been feeling anyway: My carefree, hopeful 20s were the Obama years, the Obergefell decision, the indie renaissance. I turned the corner into 30 (i.e. gave up on my dreams and settled into Real Life) as Trump recast American culture and politics in 2016. I descended into the nihilism of my late 30s as COVID-19 redefined “normal” and sapped most of our remaining resolve. We’re not out of the woods as I turn 40, but we’re in another election year in the United States, one that gives me hope for a major correction from the sins of the past decade.
And that’s what 40 feels like for me personally. I spent my 20s starry-eyed and limitless, spent my 30s becoming cynical and stuck. As I cross this midlife milestone, I’m returning to hope. No longer the naive wishfulness of my youth, this time it’s a more haggard and scarred optimism that says, “Something’s going to happen; I should figure out how to be happy about it.”
This kind of optimism won’t fix everything the way it did in my 20s. I’ve learned and survived too much to bury my head in the sands of hope. But I’m tired of being cynical about it. I hope this new, wiser optimism can help me walk lighter and breathe easier, even as I continue to prepare for and survive the worst in the years to come.
I don’t have plans for my 40th year or my fourth decade. I’ve experienced enough surprises and opportunities to know plans aren’t worth the notebook pages I fill with them.
The only promise I can make to myself for the year to come — and the decades to follow — is that I’ll let them be what they will. I won’t expect too much of them, and I’ll be grateful for what I get out of them. I’ll be optimistic and kind, I’ll spend my time on things that matter to me, and I’ll continue to learn.
I’ll reflect on this post at the end of my year, and I hope to have spent at least a few days living up to this promise.
Your turn!
How have you felt as you cross life’s milestones — 18, 21, 30, 40, 50? How has your experience compared with your expectations and the cultural narrative about that milestone?