It's perhaps unusual that my first ever bout of pre-birthday anxiety didn't come before a celebration ending in zero.
Sadly, I only had myself to blame.
![That's not how I used to look.](/web/20170319192931im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/v/n/k/m/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.guvmxy.png/1489715498976.jpg)
For years my wife, six months my senior, and I have had a running joke. Well, I've had a running joke that she's learnt to put up with. It started when she hit 30. We were filling out some government form when I pointed out how she had crossed into the 30-39 box, while I was busy living it up in the 20-29 box. You can imagine how much I savoured (/laboured) the point. From then on, every year the ages in the box would change slightly. (In my jokes, that is, not on the government forms.) So it went from the 20-29 box to the 21-30 box and its 31-40 equivalent, etc. Consider it bureaucratic inflation.
So you can imagine my exquisite pleasure when I read, only marginally before her birthday last year, that she was about to cross Australia's median age – the tipping point at which she would be older than more than half the population. All of a sudden, there were two boxes. I was in the 0-37 box, and she was in the 38-110 box. Brilliant! Oh, how I laughed. Until, of course, six months later, when the reality of this situation hit me like a freight train.
![At least I haven't bought myself a motorcycle yet.](/web/20170319192931im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/v/n/i/9/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.guvmxy.png/1489715498976.jpg)
I am older than 50% of Australians. HOW. DID. THIS. HAPPEN?!? (Well, not literally, because that's pretty self evident.) There have been 12 million Australians born since I've been on this planet. Blimey.
I remember as a child my dad telling me that the thing about ageing was that you didn't necessarily feel any older until you looked in a mirror. He was right. But what's worse is that I am telling a story about how the passage of time proved my dad correct – this is as sure a sign of ageing as I can imagine.
To be clear: it's not wrinkles I'm worried about. Or my hair falling out or turning grey. It's that I still don't even feel like a grown-up, nevermind being double the age of other people now deemed grown-ups.
I guess I was expecting to have life a bit more figured out by now.
It's not that I haven't learnt lessons along the way, more that I've had to keep re-learning them. Age is supposed to bring wisdom, isn't it? So why are some of those same tendencies I disliked in my 20s proving so challenging still?
Because change is hard, I guess. Who knows, even impossible? I saw a book the other day that proclaimed self acceptance to be more important than self improvement. It's a tempting concept, counter-intuitive to our times.
But then I clearly have changed over time. In some ways, hopefully, for the better. Predictably, my patience and tolerance is starting to wane. (The slide towards grumpy old man syndrome?) Certainly the temptation to retreat into our own little family world grows stronger by the year.
One thing I have definitely noticed is a reduced capability for doing nothing. At university, we were champion time wasters. I remember watching the same film over and over, finding increasing enjoyment as the lines became rote. We would regularly sleep past 9am. And the inane banter of our many nights in the pub was only exceeded in ridiculousness by the conversations conducted in a fog of post-inebriated haze the following day.
What a luxury that seems now! The realities of work, children and home-ownership are clearly contributing factors, but I fear the external causes aren't all that's to blame. It seems to me a mindset thing. I've forgotten how to relax – have come to define myself by my busy-ness. This may be a normal part of ageing - as time becomes more precious, you strive harder to make the most of it. Or it may be an 'era' thing – the digital age does seem to have eroded our collective ability to do nothing. Always having something to do has made us bored very easily, failing to realise that time 'wasted' with family and friends is the most precious of all.
Meanwhile, the minutes tick by and I spend them worrying about worrying too much. See! What better proof of the ridiculousness of the human condition? But then most of life's internal mental struggles can be boiled down to caring about things too much or too little.
Suffice to say life still perplexes me as much at 38 as it did when I was 20. Well, if not as much then certainly significantly. Still, maybe that's a good thing. It's usually not long after mastering something that we grow tired of it. And surely I'll have all that other stuff figured out by the time I'm 50, right?
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