Considering the steps and stumbles I have encountered on my way to 40, maybe I'm not the best person to be offering wisdom. But maybe the fact that I have spoken when I should have been silent, kept my mouth shut when I should have made my voice heard, loved unwisely, chose the wrong battles to fight, chosen the safe path when I should have been bolder (and the other way around), and gained and lost and gained friends and allies through my choices is an indication that I may actually have something useful to say.
So, with complete disregard to ranking or importance, other than that these occurred to me in the order that they did (which might say something or might not), here is my own contribution to what is surely a staggering number of life lists.
Why 17? Because that was the number of things I could think of in one day. Obviously.
By the Time You are 40, You Should Have...
1. ...had your heart broken
One of my favorite plays/movies, The History Boys, contains an idea about the pain of true love that I find somewhat true, namely that it is "the only education worth having." I'm not sure whether it is the only thing we need to learn, but there is something to be said for experiencing, in all its bitterness, your first (of what will likely be many) broken hearts. For most of us it is the first time we come to learn that not all dreams last. That's the bad part, although it does give us the gift of looking at the world with our eyes a little more open.
What happens after is just as important. Day by day, at an imperceptible rate, we feel better and better. And then, one day, we don't hurt anymore; we have survived what Shakespeare has noted again and again could not be survived. It's a training ground for the heart, and will give us something of what we need for the disappointments ahead.
2. ...broken a heart
People tend to disappoint us. It's just what they do. What we do. Love is no different, as noted here. Sometimes we are the ones that disappoint. Sometimes we are the ones who break the hearts, if only to save our own. I have heard the argument that it is just as bad to be the one who dumps as it is to be the one who is dumped. Bullshit; it's far easier to be the dumper than the dumpee, if only because it means you are the one in control of the decision.
It's not a distinction you get to make until you've lived both sides. The real reason for this item on the list, however, is that it exposes you to the art of letting someone down as kindly as possible, if not always as gently. You will need this skill, in this area, and many others, in the course of a long lifetime.
But, for the love of Pete, have the decency to do it in person. I would like to think that breaking up by text is funny, except that it seems to happen far too often. If you're going to hurt someone you need to have the guts to look them in the eye while doing it. And nothing makes you understand the import of what you are doing than seeing its effect immediately and up close.
3. ...lost a job
The loss of a job can be devastating. Someone, probably your boss, has decided that for whatever reason you don't have what it takes. He or she could be completely wrong (and often are), but it will cause you to question (and, more importantly, work through) whether he or she is in fact correct. Coming through this builds character in ways not to be duplicated elsewhere.
As of this count I have lost two jobs, within a year of each other. Neither of these situations were something that I could control, and if you want a reminder that the universe moves in ways that are ignorant of your wishes this is certainly one way to get it.The first was the result of a decision by one person, over the written objection of dozens of others, and served notice that no one, especially me, was safe. The second job loss resulted because of the rather severe emotional trauma caused by the first, with which I still struggle and likely always will.
Mostly I am angry, as you will be if and when this happens to you. Sometimes, though, I am reminded of the opportunities that came to me because of what I believed was an unmitigated disaster: the ability to care for a dear friend in her last days, to publish a book and work on writing two others, to live in another country, to see what else I can be.
In a perfect world we would take our own chances, live interesting lives without prompting. In the day-to-day, though, this often doesn't happen. Sometimes we need a push.
Or two.
4. ...quit a job without necessarily obtaining another
Not the same thing as losing a job, quitting a job is an indication of something else: that you have decided, if only for a time, that the getting and obtaining of money comes in second to something else. For some it is simply time, the only finite and forever dwindling resource in our lives. For others, driven to the brink of insanity by their bosses/coworkers/commute/shitty lunch truck that is the only food option within miles, it is their very well-being. Whatever the reason, you made a choice that not many would deem wise, and that takes a spine.
Most of the time it works out...eventually. Regardless, no kind of regret beats the kind that hits you when you look back on the years, a large percentage of which are spent on a job, and find that save for the ability to pay your bills they didn't seem to count for much at all.
5. ...faced a primal fear
We live in a dangerous world, and most of us go through our days blithely engaging in everyday activities that can get us killed. Here's the most salient example. It seems odd, then, that we spend so much of our time petrified by far less dangerous things. Flying, so much safer than car travel that when a plane crashes it actually makes the news; spiders, most of which are completely harmless to us; and public speaking, which apparently outranks death itself, are just a few examples. We all suffer from something, and that's okay. What's not okay is allowing this to circumscribe your life; the world's too big and too interesting.
I get it; irrational fears are irrational because they can't be reasoned with. Here's the thing: the more, and the more frequently, we put on our big kid pants and face our fears, the less powerful they become. This one's mine. Hate needles, always have, going back to a childhood trauma in which one of my first memories is of needles floating in front of my face, accompanied by pain.
Yet every time I have been required to either get a shot or have blood drawn the fear far outweighed the actuality; they don't even hurt that much. Recently, because of the medical requirements for the Peace Corps, I have had to obtain many immunizations and have blood work done. After a few of these pointy bastards they ceased to be a big deal. In fact, when I returned to the lab to get my results I was apologetically told that they would need to do another blood draw. My response? "Okay."
And it was. Funny how that works. So, whatever you're afraid of, look it in the face, as frightening as it is. If you need help doing so, that's okay too. We all do, from time to time. It doesn't make us weak. It makes us human.
6. ...gained an exercise habit
Aging is no joke! Your metabolism slows down. Joints you didn't know you had start to ache. Your hair starts to go gray or go away. This happens to all of us, to varying degrees. Some of it we can control. Some of it we can't. Some of it we can just slow down, giving ourselves a little more time.
I taught high school for 15 years. My first student is now 32 years old. Most are younger. All have aged, some well and some poorly. Maybe a drinking habit acquired in college finally caught up with them. Or the demands of an actual job and family. Whatever your reason, it is easy to just accept the change, the ever-quickening degradation of our bodies, doing nothing about it, until we shuffle off our mortal coils.
Also, the insidious nature of a sedentary life is that the more out of shape we become, the harder it is to even begin to get better.
But don't quit before starting. Because there's this guy.
And once you're there, keep going, because there's this guy.
There's also my dad, who at age 67 began going back to the gym, having been informed that if he wanted to spend some time with me in Washington DC he would need to be able to walk five to ten miles a day. That trip never happened (my fault, not his). What did happen is that he lost 45 pounds, and received a lab report of his latest tests with only one comment: "Keep doing what you're doing."
There are 40-year olds who can't make it to the front door. There are 60-year olds running marathons.
Be the latter.
7. ...spent at least a year living somewhere other than your home town
John Donne once noted that "to live in one land is captivitie" (misspelling intentional here, kids). Having only lived in two places--San Jose and Seattle--I haven't done much more. However, I do know that I am a more complete, if not necessarily better, person than I might have been if I had not left California.
There are a lot of good reasons to leave your home. I'll focus on only one. When you decide to make your home (not a travel destination) somewhere else you are forgoing the built-in, and thus invisible, support network that surrounded you in your hometown, including a knowledge of the local geography you acquired unconsciously. Thus just as learning a second language asks different things of your brain than learning your first, living in a new place and finding a way to make it work, often all on your very own, does the same.
You also find out what works for you in a home and what doesn't. For me, San Jose does not. For the woman who moved to Seattle with me, it does. Which is one of many reasons why she is back in the Bay Area and I am not. For a lot of people, their hometown is really all they need, and it fits them perfectly. But how can you know if your home is your home until you've tried another?
8. ...read 100 books (at least)
Mark Twain once said (supposedly) that the person who does not read good books is no better off than the person who can't read them. I might argue that they are worse off; they are willingly choosing ignorance, and that's kinda sad. Books offer one thing that our other forms of entertainment do not: they require the participant to play an active role in creating the fun, to form pictures and stories in their heads with only the words on a page to guide them. It's a form of mental exercise that is far underutilized, and it's lack of use makes one lazy, plain and simple.
As a language arts teacher I required my students to read a fairly large number of novels. I know that most of them just used SparkNotes or some other method to get the information, but the end result is that this tendency to avoid the classics that have stood the test of time is that they, not I, lost out. If nothing else it would have been nice to hear original excuses. No, kiddo, the book's not boring. You are.
Funny thing: I did this in high school as well, and I loved to read. Perhaps it was the compulsory nature of the work that got to me, for as an adult I have gone back and revisited the novels that were forced upon me as a child and found gold there. But I was a reader by habit to begin with, so I had the skill to do so. For those that do not, because it was never inculcated at a young age, it's harder.
What I do know is that there is a correlation between life success and growing up in a home where books were the norm. Don't believe me: here. So if you didn't have books in your house when you were a child, make sure your own child does. Even if you are 30 years old, it would require you to read only one book a month for you to reach 100 books (actually, the age for this to work is 31 and 8 months...I think), and that's if you've never read a book in your life. Much like the exercise habit (and this is definitely a form of exercise) it's never too late.
You'll be a more interesting person for it.
9. ...used a skill to better the world
I don't want to get preachy here. For one, it's not my style. For another I don't have a lot of ground to stand on when it comes to morality and goodness. However, I do believe that unless you are putting something in which you have acquired expertise to use in bettering society at large (and if it puts money in your bank account, that is totally okay) you are just taking up space on an already-overcrowded planet.
We live in a dark world, and the problems that plague us are, for the most part, incomprehensible, or at least so vast that to comprehend them would drive the best of us back to our beds. The solutions to these are complex and difficult to really implement. So it's easy to wonder what good our occasional acts of kindness, charity, or plain old labor can do. We're just a candle in a blacked out universe, after all.
Light enough candles, though, and who knows....
10. ...persistently attempted to learn a skill in which you have no talent and never will
It's not that I don't think I can dance. I know for a fact that I can't. The basic four-count rhythm (though people count to eight, and why do they do that?) seems simple enough, and I can do that with my feet. Add in hand movements, maybe a spin, though, and all hell breaks loose. I forget to do anything with my lower body, so hyperfocused am I on doing this other thing. It's laughable, and the girl I'm seeing, who suggested we take Salsa classes, laughs right along with me.
I won't give up. I will get a little better, maybe even remember to put my foot back when I spin her, to continue my own motions. I'm not getting my hopes up too much on that score, but one never knows. That's not the point.
We're all good at something, and most of us like to demonstrate our skills to the world. It makes us look good, or at least feel good. Looking bad, on the other hand, takes strength. That's one characteristic we could all use a little more of. But to continue to strive at something, anything, against all evidence that you will be successful, takes strength of will.
And you're not an adult until you've got that.
11. ...learned to drive a stick shift
I'm not going to say much about this, other than you never know. Maybe your friend was driving the two of you to a day hike and he or she suffers a broken foot. Their car's a stick shift. How the hell are you two going to get home?
Plus, you can always teach your girlfriend or boyfriend if they don't know how, and that's hot.
12. ...had a pet
While some people are gifted with both the ability and desire to feed, house, and care for any and all God's creatures, others shouldn't be left in a room alone with a goldfish. Wherever you land on this distribution you can never really understand responsibility until the life and well-being of another creature is in your hands, until you know what it feels like to have something else literally live or die because of the decisions you make. Suddenly the world isn't all about you.
It has been argued that this is training of sorts for having kids, and while this may be said in jest you'd better be sure you can take care of some other living thing before cutting your teeth on raising an actual child.
13. ...learned to cook
I think that fast food joints and, later, actual restaurants serve a purpose for the teenaged and twenty-something set. Basic sustenance (if you can call it that), a chance to be social, and many opportunities to find out what kinds of food you actually like, absent the time commitment of shopping, cooking, and dishes.
And cooking can be a chore, but like many tasks in life, the successful accomplishing of it makes a statement that you are able to stand on your own. At the very least, learn not to overcook pasta, how to properly grill meat, and other basic survival necessities. For those more advanced, or those looking to impress, have one or two signature dishes in the bank. I can make a rosemary lemon roast chicken that impresses friends, lovers, and potential lovers alike. Find something that you can do and make it work for you.
14. ...lost a friendship or a family connection because of your core values
We judge our values by what we are willing to give up for them. In the most extreme case this can involve the people we care about, for there is nothing more important in our lives, absent ourselves, than our loved ones. It is also true that our values tend to be idiosyncratic to us, although we probably share the same general sentiments with large swathes of the population. So it stands to reason that most of the people around us, friends and family alike, don't think in quite the same way we do. Most of the time these differences are navigable.
For others we take a stand. It doesn't really matter what your conviction is, only that you have one that you believe in to the point that to sustain a relationship with someone actively opposed to it is untenable. A lot of time this is a friend who has changed (or you have changed). At other times, more sadly, it's a family member who tests just how much blood ties will bind you.
We all espouse certain values and beliefs. Rarely are we called upon to demonstrate the strength of these in our hearts. Considering we use them to guide our lives, there is no more certain, if tragic, way to test them than by giving up on someone you love.
15. ...attended a funeral of someone who was your age or younger
40 is often called a time for mid-life crises. It's a convenient number, though the classic mid-point is supposed to be 35. After that time we should really be thinking about what we've done with our lives, and what our legacy will be. Theoretically.
In truth, everyone gets the same amount of time, which is a lifetime, and it helps to be reminded that there is no proper age at which to start living. It's occasionally healthy to reflect upon the notion that we are always living on borrowed time, that it can all go away in an instant, or at least far too quickly. And that's that; all that we did up until our unexpected or expected, timely or tragic passing is what we will be measured by.
Nothing quite like the funeral of someone who didn't get as long as you to remind you to get moving.
16. ...taken on a vice
Perfect people are boring. And annoying. So develop a habit that you can be ashamed of once in a while. It'll make it much easier for others to relate to you.
Yes, smoking will give you lung cancer and emphysema, and excessive drinking will destroy your liver (drinking every so often gets a thumbs up). How about jaywalking? Telling occasionally inappropriate jokes? Spitting? Using Britishisms or archaic phrases? Something that brings you down, or at least a little closer, to our level.
We shan't talk to you otherwise.
17. ...had sex
Really. By the time you've hit 40 you should have done it at least a few times. It's fantastic!
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