SO THEY SAY: 50 IS THE NEW 30

I’d quite like to track down the idiot who came up with the saying “50 is the new 30.” I have a few words for them.

It’s true that being 50 today has very little in common with being 50 in our parents’ generation. We enjoy better health, longer life expectancy, and far more social, emotional, and professional opportunities than those who came before us.

And compared with our thirties, we’re often in a stronger position financially, with more established personal and professional networks and – generally speaking – a greater sense of stability.

Life experience often allows us to navigate difficulties more effectively, make better decisions, and see things with greater perspective.

But this is also the turning point at which we come face to face with the reality of mortality – our own and that of our parents.

Our health may begin to show signs of wear and tear – or at the very least demand far more attention than it did at 30 – and our parents gradually become more dependent.

One of my closest friends has just lost her mother. Another worries constantly about hers and calls her every day. I, too, am haunted by a quiet, persistent anxiety about my own mother’s health as she begins to grow frail.

The mother of one of my exes recently became widowed at 90 and now finds herself alone managing a vast, isolated farm in Ireland. The mother of another had to move into a care home for her own safety, as home nursing support was no longer enough.

Heartbreaking. Really.

Add to that teenagers who, at best, require constant attention and, at worst, make spectacularly bad decisions, and you have what is known as the sandwich generation: people in their fifties juggling the needs of ageing parents and adolescent kids while their own lives remain… very much active.

Worry and responsibility – for others as well as for ourselves – define the sandwich generation.

Are we different from previous generations in this respect? Yes. Our parents are living longer than their parents did, while our children generally stay in education for longer than previous generations. So here we are, in our fifties, simultaneously wrestling with university application strategies for our dear teenagers and trying to figure out the best care arrangements for our ageing parents.

Let’s just say light-heartedness isn’t exactly the dominant mood.

So what do we do?

We fully accept death – our own and that of those we love. We remind ourselves that it is the natural cycle of life, that there is no life without death, and that the best way to die well is to have lived well.

We focus on what truly matters. We sweep away the trivial, the mediocre, the uninteresting, and the toxic.

We remind ourselves that we are doing the best we can with the resources and understanding we have at any given moment, and we stop beating ourselves up over imperfect choices.

We make the most of the present.

We stop dwelling endlessly on a past filled with regrets or a future crowded with worries.

We live intentionally.

To paraphrase Carl Jung, who wrote extensively about maturity, the mistake is probably trying to live our fifties with the same expectations and goals we had at twenty-five. We are constantly changing, and the only sensible response is to accept it.

The age of maturity calls for a kind of fulfilment that is worlds away from the ego-driven and often superficial achievements of youth.

So yes, let us live intentionally.

And then let’s go and have a Spritz. Because, why not ?