“Every age has its compensations.” That was (and is) my mother’s favorite quote regarding excessive numbers of birthdays; it never was mine until now. I turned forty last week. I’m not sure how I got to this place; I was just tooling along, minding my own business, when this huge milestone rolled into my path. The funny thing is, now that I’m past it, it doesn’t bother me nearly as much as I expected.

I have no desire to go back to the powerlessness of childhood, the angst of adolescence, or the (relative) poverty of my twenties. I like making my own decisions, being at home in my own skin and having a decent bank account. None of that is particularly surprising. I guess what surprises me is that I also don’t have a desire to relive my thirties. In my thirties I really became my own person; I shook off a lot of baggage I had been carting around and learned a lot about living life on my own terms. It took me until my thirties to really become a grown up.

I used to think that middle age meant you had done all the fun stuff, and all that was left was going over and over the rut you dug for yourself. Now I think that middle age means you have the time, the knowledge and the resources to accomplish things that are truly meaningful and that will give both yourself and others joy. So, now I find myself back in school, after a seventeen-year hiatus, pursuing a second degree radically different from the first one. I have also registered for a 9K run on Mother’s Day; in my younger days, I would have declared I wasn’t athletic.

Other dreams I have every intention of pursuing are learning to swim (not just floundering gracelessly across the pool), going on a river rafting trip down the Rio Grande (maybe this summer) and volunteering on an archaeological dig (that one might have to wait awhile).

Much of my (and probably, everybody’s) adult life has been about delayed gratification. Wait until you’re through with school, wait until you’re married (we all know what THAT’S about), wait until the baby sleeps through the night, wait until the kids are older.

Last week, I realized that later is NOW. That’s the cool thing about being forty. Yes, there are still some things I have to wait for. Medicare and retirement come to mind. But the preparation is done; the groundwork has been laid. I have lived my life in such a way that I have, by and large, no regrets. And regrets are what make you old.

Kimberly Thompson
Graduate student in psychology