06/02/08

The Themes of our Lives

I’m now 38, and I hang around with a lot of people who are at about the same late-30s phase in life. No matter if it’s friends I see every day or people I run into once in awhile, I have noticed that we all have the same basic themes in life. We’ve all started to notice things we didn’t before, we’re all having similar battles with some things.

Here are a few of the themes I keep running across.

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Family: we’re all firmly tied to our families, whether those families have babies or older kids, or whether there aren’t any kids at all. Even though some of us with a little older kids are starting to have more freedom, we still mostly stay around home.

I was at a party a couple of Fridays ago with a lot of late-30s and that’s what a lot of the talk was about: family. These were the same people that are mentioned in newspapers: young professionals who are building their careers. These should be the people that, as they say in the newspapers and magazines, are so busy they don’t have time for their children, who just give the kids more money and cool toys instead of their time.

I see no sign of that, except that we all happen to be at a party instead of home (which for most of us is not a common thing). Given the chance, people at this party seem to want to talk for hours about their families. The best comment I heard all night was from one of the big managers: ‘You know the greatest sport there is? 8-year-old hockey. Forget the big games, those guys are just in it for the money. If you want to see something really fun, where the people are trying as hard as they can, go see 8-year-olds playing.’

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Work: all of a sudden we woke up and realized we had been in the same place, maybe doing the same job, for 9 or 10 years! That’s a long time, sometimes longer than we’ve been with our families or children. 

So right now we’re starting to wonder: should I stay here? Should I stay in this field that I know well, or should I move into something else while I’m still young (after which we remind ourselves that we still have 25 more years of work, there is lots of time to do other things).

Some of us have changed places and fields, but probably a lot more of us are still wondering…                                               #                                  #

Giving up: a friend of mine wrote a New Year’s letter to friends, telling about her year. She said it was a year of giving up: she gave up smoking, eating whatever she wanted, her old job, and some old work mates who moved to other jobs. She learned, or maybe just accepted, that giving up is part of life.

I guess it’s something you don’t normally have to think about before this age.

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Health: we are dealing with the first signs of getting older. Some of us have our first wrinkles, for the first time we find ourselves listening to ads about all kinds of face creams. And most of us have started to work on our health. We’ve started diets (and often the reason is not for our looks but for our health), stopped bad habits like smoking, and have started exercising.

We can’t take it for granted anymore, it’s something we have to work on. That I guess we realized before, after all people and magazines have been telling us that for ages.

The difference is that now we are seeing it in our own lives, and we are accepting it.                                             #                                  #

WORDS: Theme: teema; Battle: taistelu; Field: ala; Give up: luopua; Wrinkle: ryppy: Face cream: kasvovoide