Turning 50 is not so bad!

[racehorse]

I admit I was not too happy to turn 50 at the end of last September. Of course, it was much better than never turning 50. Still, It really was a cause of much dread and also some needed inner reflection and reevaluation. Ultimately 50 is just another number and I am for one and like many others a "young 50" and like the article says there is still much to savour and also to look forward to. It is really not so bad afterall.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/52 ... l-bad.html

Turning 50: it's not all bad

Jim White reflects on his half century and reports that while turning 50 is a shock for some, there is also much to savour.


By Jim White

Last Updated: 5:51PM BST 23 Apr 2009

For my friend John, the realisation of what it really meant to be 50 took about six months to dawn. He had just about grown used to the idea that those many successful folk he saw in public life – those who, to his mind, appeared to be several years his senior – were in fact his junior. He had wearily accepted that he was older than the comfortably contoured darts champion Phil Taylor and had reconciled himself to the thought that despite all available physical evidence, Alan Shearer, seemingly balding by the moment in his new appointment as manager of Newcastle United, had actually been in nappies when John himself was starting out at secondary school. He even appreciated that the position of president of the United States, a proper grown-up job if ever there was one, was now occupied by someone who was younger than him.

But what really cut my old friend to the quick was a story in the papers the other week. It concerned Tracey Fox, a housewife from County Durham who had become so frustrated by the inability of Curry's to sort out her broken washing machine that when one of the company's repairmen showed up at her home and made noises about how he couldn't do the job, she locked him in her kitchen, refusing to let him out until he fixed it. In every newspaper, Mrs Fox was reported to be a grandmother. One of the tabloids called her a "plucky granny", a description which made John imagine her as the white-haired, fox-stole-wearing character from the Giles cartoons, wielding her bone-handled brolly in the face of corporate indifference. Except, when he read the report a bit further, he discovered that Mrs Fox was actually 42. "So I'd been around for eight years longer than this so-called plucky granny. Jeez: that was a nice discovery," says John. This was the moment, he says, that he realised quite what had happened to him: he was now, in the eyes of the world, officially and irrefutably old.

John reached his milestone last spring. And what a milestone it was. "I've been working with the same team of people for some time now and no one ever questioned my age before," he says. "But when I mentioned to young colleagues how old I was going to be, I was assailed by cries of incredulity. And no it wasn't flattering, it wasn't because I look so youthful. It was because they just couldn't believe anyone that old actually worked with them. I've noticed that for them 50 is wholly negative, a term of abuse, as in 'he was just some 50-year-old duffer'. Which is fair enough, because I'm sure that's how I used to think, too."

What John had discovered was that, the moment he hit his half century, he had not simply added another digit to his chronological scoreboard, he had now entered an entirely new demography. At 49, he was still part of the 35-plus generation, still thrusting, still upwardly mobile, still a man of potential. He was still 35-49. But on the point of reaching 50, he joined a different marketing group altogether, the one heading rapidly down a black run to a lonely grave. It was a club to which, frankly, he had no recall of ever applying for membership.

John's experience is not uncommon. Research in the US has indicated that turning 50 can be one of life's darkest events. This is the age that can mark the very trough of life, the basement point in mental wellbeing, the moment most of us realise not only that we have achieved nothing, but now it is very unlikely we will ever achieve anything. That's certainly what happened to me. Fifty hit not with a bang, but with a smothering, deepening sense of defeat. It wasn't just that – as it generally does – it coincided with an emptying nest and with family bereavement. There was something else, an aching acknowledgement that I will never now be spotted in the park by a football scout, that I will never now top the charts, that the next Olympics will pass happily without my involvement, or indeed the involvement of anyone anywhere close to my vintage. Fifty was the point at which, never mind that attractive young woman I've just passed not noticing my existence, I became invisible even to clipboard-wielding street questionnaire muggers: not in their demographic, you see. The day a bloke at Oxford Circus Underground refused to consider giving me a flier about a new fashion boutique was the day I learned that in every social sense I had become irrelevant.

This isn't a gender thing. Turning 50 is no fairground ride for women. Wondering what happened to your waist; discovering that not a single high street store deems you of sufficient worth to stock any flattering clothes; insisting that the central heating is turned down even as everyone else in the room freezes: if there is any howling going on here it is not with laughter.

"All the mental health statistics suggest that 50 marks the high point of anxiety and depression for both sexes," says Dr Andrew McCulloch, chief executive of the Mental Health Foundation. "One in five women and one in six men in this country suffer from depression at this time. And the only reason there are fewer men is that men are less likely to admit there's a problem and seek diagnosis."

You might call it a midlife crisis except, most of us 50 year olds had one of those a decade ago when we bought a motorbike, grew a ponytail and looked up our first date on Friends Reunited. With but a score remaining of our allotted three score years and 10, this is more like a two-thirds downturn; not so much a chronological recession as a deepening depression. And unlike that earlier episode, it is not about a fruitless urge to recapture the days of yore. It is more a low-level ache, a sense of purposelessness best described by Kenneth Williams's prescient last words: "Oh, what's the bloody point?"

What's more – while no one has ever sung from the rooftops on turning 50 – we, the unhappy breed reaching that age these days, appear to have the ageing angst worse than any generation before us. Or at least that is the findings of recent research.

"It is not simply about the number of years you have accumulated," says Dr McCulloch. "To be exact, there are four ages we all feel. Our chronological age; our biological age – everyone's body decays at a different rate; our psychological age – how old we feel; and finally our social age – how other people see us."

And it is this social age that has snared folk of my epoch. Put simply, we worry far more than our parents ever did about how old others think we are. Victims of the cult of youth we helped set in train, we have grown up in the fond assumption that age will never wither us. Encouraged by consumerism, we have cheerily embraced the idea that association with objects will facilitate endless regeneration. I'm still vibrant, we think, because I use Facebook, because I've got an iPod, because I mocked the winter by sporting a parka with a big furry hood. And then we discover that we have reached a point of chronology at which the very youth-obsessed society into which we have all bought blindly rejects us as past it. Hey, we shout, I may be 50 but I can still download a ringtone to my mobile without the assistance of a teenager. See, chronology doesn't count, it's my social age that matters. The trouble is no one is listening to you. Not now you've turned 50.

2008 was a particularly chastening year for those of us sustained by the idea of perpetually belonging to the young. In the same year I hit my half century, Prince, Paul Weller, Madonna and Michael Jackson all turned 50. There are some serious issues in that little list (and that's without even mentioning Wacko Jacko). Take Madonna. For years she was reckoned to be the very apex of fashion, the presiding genius of reinvention, constantly a step or two ahead of the mainstream; even in her forties her music was still reckoned buzzingly relevant. Then she turned 50 and immediately her urgent need to innovate was characterised as tragic-comic. Female newspaper columnists turned decidedly unsisterly about her extraordinary physical condition. The amount of lifting she did in the gym was dismissed as unseemly. Besides, wasn't there sign of smoothing work on those crow's feet? And have you seen those arms? What was it her ex-husband said about going to bed with her? Oh yes, it was like cuddling up to a string of gristle. A photograph issued to promote her latest record, in which she was strapped semi-naked into bondage gear, was roundly mocked. She hits 50 and the woman who, at 49, was recognised as the greatest female pop artist of all time, is now dismissed as a woman pathetically trying to stem the tide of age, a cosmetic King Canute, mutton trussed up as mutton.

And so it goes on, the hubris of 50. At my local BBC Radio station, there is a noticeboard which reminds staff of their target audience. Every Monday, they put up a picture of a celebrity who turns 50 that week. "Some names might surprise you" a caption above the picture reads. And they invariably do: student bedsit warbler Morrissey, plastic surgery victim Pete Burns, hip young gunslinger Julie Burchill. Recently, on my way to record something in one of the studios, I happened to be walking behind two BBC employees in their thirties, when we all simultaneously spotted on the board a picture of Bruno Brooks, the erstwhile Radio One DJ. The picture was of him in his Eighties pomp, with wedding-cake coiffure and big collar, showing his cuddly side by playing with a Labrador puppy, smiling the confident smile of those who believe it will never happen to them.

"Bloody hell," said one of them. "Bruno Brooks is 50. I wonder what he's doing now, the poor old sod."

I tried to find out how the man himself felt about being 50. But, after tracking him down, I was told he was too busy to be interviewed, what with his in-store radio projects and his property portfolio. Besides, his PA reckoned, this was not a subject he wanted to pursue. Turning 50 wasn't an issue for him, she added. To which I thought: yeah, right.

So what do we do, we poor old sods, we Morrisseys and Madonnas, we Brunos, Burchills and Burns? How do we approach life now that we have been officially rejected by the very thing we always valued: youth? According to Dr McCulloch, the best way is to engage a shift of focus.

"Don't look back, try to look forward," he says. "Tell yourself there's a lot of life left, a lot still to be done. Maybe you need to make some changes to how you approach things, but keep your attitude positive. Set out with the philosophy that you are going to enjoy this new direction."

Besides, he adds, there is surprising cause for optimism for those of us wondering who exactly is that tired old husk staring back from the mirror. There is a growing suggestion that, psychologically, turning 50 is life's darkest hour. The good news is things will, sooner rather than later, appear to be much better. Not long after we have put the comedy greetings cards in the recycling bin, comes a glowing epiphany: there is much to look forward to.

This is not fanciful, the evidence comes from a vast study into age-based contentment carried out jointly by researchers at Warwick University and Dartmouth College in the US. It concluded that a graph of happiness in a lifetime is U-shaped: it first peaks when we are 20 and then slumps to its lowest ebb at 50. But then something odd happens. It begins a steady, chirpy, upturn, reaching a point at 70 where it climbs right back up to the level it was at 20.

"You would expect people to get unhappier as they get closer to death," says Professor Andrew Oswald of Warwick University, who conducted the analysis. "But the opposite appears to be the case. By the time you reach 70, if you are still physically fit, then, on average, you are as happy and mentally healthy as a 20-year-old. It is a mystery why."

Or maybe it isn't that much of a mystery. Think of the many illuminations that can brighten life's dusk. Of grandchildren, of the reducing burden of ambition, of declining stress associated with work, of financial commitments easing. Consider the increasing amount of time available for leisure, fun and for yourself now those who have entirely occupied your time for so long seek their own way in life.

Once embraced, the possibility of the new era is immense. And this is the point. It is within that embrace that contentment lies. Perhaps life starts to get better when we realise there is no purpose trying to be something we no longer are. At the very point when we reject that which has already rejected us, when we cease the hopeless search for eternal youth, then we can start having a good time again. The moment we stop worrying about what others will think and just wear that cardigan is the moment things start to look up. This is the ultimate lesson of turning 50.

FIT AT 50

Annette Bening

John McEnroe

Michelle Pfeiffer

Jamie Lee Curtis

Christopher Dean

Madonna

Daley Thompson

Lenny Henry

Kate Bush

Michael Jackson

Jennifer Saunders

Paul Weller

Toyah Wilcox

Prince

Sade

Kyle MacLachlan

Belinda Carlisle

Michael Flatley

Joan Jett

Nick Park

Sandi Toksvig

Simon le Bon

Pauline Quirke

Tim Burton

Fiona Shaw

Kevin Bacon

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Turning 50: Paul Weller, Madonna, Michael Jackson and Decathlete Daley Thompson

[Joolz]

No, it's not so bad. I cried for a year when I turned 40, but 50 was a breeze.

Here's someone else over 50 who looks fabulous.

[racehorse]

No, it's not so bad. I cried for a year when I turned 40, but 50 was a breeze.

Here's someone else over 50 who looks fabulous.

Indeed Joolz, Emmylou Harris looks as fabulous as ever!

(More so even)

[SETIsLady]

Awww Race, your a young 50 I am not far behind you, and if I had a chance to be 20 or the age I am now, I would pick this age wouldn't you ?

And Joolz, Emmylou Harris looks a little bit like someone I know, and she is beautiful

[Psychicwolf]

Well, you whippersnappers, I am inching closer to 60 now than 50 (still have a few years though). I don't feel old at all. I did find that at 50, and this happened to several of my women friends, passing that milestone forced kind of a life review which took the better part of that first year. A lot of sorting out...what have I accomplished, what do I still want to accomplish, what will I probably not accomplish and so on. It was painful in some cases, refreshing in others and downright humorous in others. For me, fifty was really the first "milestone" birthday, since my 21st, where I had the time to look that birthday in the face. My 30th I had a newborn baby, my 40th my business had just truly taken off and I had an active elementary aged daughter plus a home so I was a flying madwoman. But 50 looked me square in the face and I had the time and inclination to face it. All in all, it was an interesting experience and really valuable. I suspect 60 will be uneventful, next "traumatic" birthday will be 65...

[Live365]

Agree with every word of everyone's post. On the 30th, I was a little spooked-out. The 40th was one of the most depressing days of my life too. But once I'd made it to the half-way mark of both decades, I knew I'd as soon blow my head off than be younger than I was. And as you all have said, I hear that turning 50 is virtual nirvhana. You're finally *cooked*, you know? You can finally just live, without all the bullcrap. Closing in at age 45, I can already feel it start to happen.

The only thing that sometimes gets to me, is society's perception of age. I still get a little glum every time I hear "over 40", as if it's some sort of end-all. But that's why I'm so grateful that we live in the time that we do. We can still look fab. And that'll show 'em.

Kewl thread, Race!

[Swerdloc]

Personally, I found turning 50 to be a very liberating experience, when I realized I wasn't dead yet and could still go on just putting one foot in front of another. I'm rather looking forward to turning 60 in about 6 months. The older one gets, the less one gives a rat's rump about what anyone else thinks.

Live long and prosper, everybody. And Emmylou Harris is a honey.

[joequinn]

I am turning sixty in a little less than twelve weeks. Everybody told me that turning 40 would be a profound shock, but it was just another day. Turning 50 was sad for me because of a number of things that were happening to me in my life at that particular time. But turning 60 will be a liberating experience for me. The fear of death is receding for me now. I certainly don't want to die, but sixty is not an obscenely young age at which to die. Being willing to die (if, and only if, one must) can be a liberating experience. It is as the 17th century writer, Sir Thomas Browne beautifully phrased it, "ready to be nothing in the expectation of being all."

[racehorse]

Awww Race, your a young 50 I am not far behind you, and if I had a chance to be 20 or the age I am now, I would pick this age wouldn't you ?

Thanks, SETIsLady.

Absolutely, I never would have thought thirty years ago that I would agree but I do.

[DeathValleyScotty]

I'll hit the 50 mark in July. I'm finding out that the older I get, the less I care about not p!ssing someone off. Sometimes it just can't be avoided. I relate this to the gal who hit my daughter in the parking lot this evening. No one got hurt and only minor vehicle damage. After I found out she had no insurance and driving on a suspended license, she wanted to know who was going to fix her car. Tonight, I didn't know, I don't care and she has "issues" with the Sheriff.

I also like to keep the following thought in mind at times like this.

"Old age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill."