As turning 50 looms, I reflect on how many people refer to 50 years old as the Halfway Mark.
Sadly, this is rarely true. My grandmother, who was in great health, passed away 2 months shy of her 100th birthday. I had been betting for years that she would live to be 103, and for a long time it looked like that was going to be an accurate assessment of her longevity.
She didn't move into assisted living until the last months of her life, which was more for her safety than anything. She was a little wobbly in her legs, and the mind was slipping a little bit. She was so damn sharp to begin with it was hard to tell that she was fighting a little dementia. It wasn't until about 45 minutes into a conversation that you realized that you were starting to go in circles. All my other grandparents were gone by the time I was 21 years old, so to have her until I was in my mid-40's was truly a gift for me her great-grandchildren.
Back to my original point: Maybe to split your life into 50 year halves is not accurate. I think it's more accurate to split it into quarters.
Q1, Birth to 25 years old: This is where you do most of your growing. The human brain isn't fully developed until around 24 (or much later for some folks, from what I've seen), so it makes sense to isolate these years into their own segment.
Q2 is true adulthood, 25 - 50 years old. Chances are you get a career, become self-sufficient, focus on work, and quite possibly get married and have kids. This where you'll have your greatest failures and triumphs, and be able to put everything important into perspective.
Q3, 50 - 75 year old, starts to become more of a wildcard. Chances are you're close to, or are done, raising kids if you have them. Maybe you've married, possibly more than once. Maybe you've divorced, possibly more than once. Your career winds down, and in the later part of Q3 you likely retire. And, statistically, there is the chance you never finish out Q3, exponentially more than Q1 and Q2.
Q4, 75 and up, is more unpredictable. If you're fortunate, your health has held up and you're feeling good and can take advantage of it. Hopefully as time and modern medicine marches on we all find ourselves in good physical shape at this point in life. Another good probability of Q4 is death. There, I said it. Facts is facts, man.
My Q1 was pretty good. Without a whole lot of effort pieces fell into place pretty well. Made it through school pretty unscathed, fell ass backwards into some awesome situations and opportunities, and began a career in television. Made a ton of friends that I still consider my closest confidants to this day. Theses years were my most financially challenging ones, but I was rich with friendships, which was worth twice it's weight in gold.
Q2 was never what I imagined it would be, and it goes to show you that you never know what life has in store for you. Most notably, I went from NO children to 5 kids in 19 months. My twin girls were born when I was 29, Chantal and I married, which added her twins to the equation. Then, my son was born when I was 30. 28 year old me wouldn't have even recognized 31 year old me.
Not only did family life get a lot more complicated, but so did my professional life. I jumped around between several jobs/careers in my 30's, some for the better and a number for the worse. Also, as of the writing of this, I no longer have kids; I have adult children. And it's really weird.
Q3 starts soon, and I have no idea what it holds for me. I can't even fathom Q4. I suppose during Q4 I'll lose my parents, and probably some more friends. We all expect that our parents die during our lifetime, but losing the friends will be tough, and I'm not looking forward to it.
Okaaay….that was a real upper, wasn't it?
To summarize: We live, stuff changes, we die. And we have no control over most of it. But yet we stress about it all. Maybe it's time to start ignoring life's benchmarks and take it day by day.
And, oh yeah, shoot for an amazing Q4. Let's do it together.
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