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"Over 40" what a nice, open-ended phrase. I am, indeed, over 40, but in just over a year, I'll be 50.

Ten years ago, if you'd asked me about any of this, I would have been unable to answer. Up to about age 40, I drifted, believing that good things would simply come my way. That was the mindset I was raised with, by loving blue-collar parents who were so in awe of my very existence, they could not imagine anything less than riches, fame, and spectacular success for me in life. Advice from them took the form of "Don't get hurt, don't take risks, just take it easy and everything will be fine." There was no suggestion of a plan, a goal, or a path. And so, I meandered, through college, through relationships, with goals that were little more than pipe-dreams, discarded as soon as they failed to materialize out of nothing, as I'd been raised to expect.

This non-strategy gave me a safe, ordinary life, one with few hills or valleys. Few real losses, other than one friend from high school; a non-demanding office career, plenty of free time to waste, a lukewarm but functional marriage, and no kids.

Life began to take its little swipes at me as age 30 approached. A miscarriage ended my first attempt at parenthood. Then success, and with it all the emotional highs and lows that come with a baby. My parents died within a year and a half of each other. Soon, large cracks began appearing in the marriage. We thought a joint business venture might fix things, but in a few short years, my son and I were on our own. Still, even with this unforeseen development, I wasn't taking charge of my own destiny. I was sitting and waiting for "something wonderful" to "happen."

Not long after the divorce, I met the man to whom I am now married. This relationship bears a much stronger resemblance to my youthful ideals of marriage, and I have few, if any regrets, other than having plunged so blindly into the first one.

But then came "the big four-oh." I clearly remember one day, just weeks before my birthday, in the midst of yet another phone fight with my ex, having the distinct sensation of being left on a beach on a cloudy day as the tide went out, never to return. Looking back at the preceding four decades showed nothing but squandered time, squandered opportunities, bad decisions, and a constant state of self-delusion.

Rather than spurring me to pull myself up by my bootstraps and make it better, this realization plunged me into emotional quicksand. I sank lower and lower over the next 4 years, until I hit bottom by getting fired from a job for the first time ever.

Things could not have been much worse in my life. I had a good marriage, a wonderful kid, and my health, but little else. At that point, I took stock, made a few important changes in my thinking, and got myself back. The last four years have been a time of optimism, energy, and "thinking outside the box."

I'm looking forward to 50. I like this particular vantage point in life: "Old" enough to appreciate youth, and not too "old" to still experience it, without the unrealistic overconfidence that causes a twenty-something to blithely wander off the edge of a cliff.

Forty was not a year to celebrate. Since then, I have built a new foundation and discarded the shaky planks that formed the first half of my life.

Learn more about this author, Elaine Arthur.
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