50@50
We often think about ageing with fear and trepidation, which is a waste of time. I’ve decided to embrace being fifty with open arms by undertaking a series of challenges throughout the year.
Since passing my first score years, I have reached each additional decade of my life with a certain amount of shock at the speed my imaginary hourglass is collecting an ever-burgeoning mound of sand on its lower deck. Each decade, I look back at me of ten years earlier and curse the fool I was for thinking I was old then when the young idiot should see me now. Unlike Samuel Beckett’s Krapp, I haven’t committed my internal monologue to tape, and I’m sure I wouldn’t listen to it if I had. I am saying this as, later this month, I am due to celebrate my 50th birthday and, for the first time in my life, I have decided to pause and contemplate this landmark. It is time to reflect and ponder how it’s all going.
I am pretty relaxed about hitting my half-century, but there is no getting away from the fact that it is a relatively advanced age. Putting this into context, according to the UN, if I represented an average man living in the Central African Republic, Lesotho, Sierra Leone or Eswatini, I would be worms’ meat by now. By the same reckoning, if I hailed from Chad, Angola or the Ivory Coast this would be the last birthday I would be celebrating.
Closer to home, I frequently walk through Tower Hamlets Cemetery in East London. The borough still hosts some of the most disadvantaged people in the country and male life expectancy is criminally four years shorter than our counterparts four miles away in Westminster. That said, things have undoubtedly improved since they stopped planting corpses in this cemetery’s soil back in 1966. Looking at the weather-worn tombstones, only about half of the occupants made it to quinquagenarian (I had to Google that) or beyond.
About 100 years ago, male life expectancy in the UK was 47. Assuming this would not improve if you travel back further in time, we can assume that the overwhelming majority of all people who have ever lived (over 100 billion, apparently!) will have died well before reaching their 50th birthday. So despite being aware of time passing, I am also thankful that the time and place I live at least mean I am currently alive and well and able to bemoan my shift towards what Shakespeare probably thought of as the lean and slippered pantaloon.
Although 2020 was a pretty shocking and horrible year for many of us, it gave me a bit more time and space for self-reflection and a chance to consider what is valuable in my life. My main conclusions are that I am happy with my life, I am fortunate to have what I have, and I am very grateful for it.
So what do I have to make me happy? It’s what you would expect, I suppose, a good family — particularly our two amazing children. I have various excellent friends, although I don’t see most of them anywhere near often enough. I have a hobby (running) that brings me much joy, connects me to a community of fascinating and interesting people. Running also keeps me fit and allows me to maintain a 30” waist despite spending many evenings on the sofa with a large spoon and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s. I also like my house and East London, where I have lived for almost half of my life.
It’s not all perfect. I wish my parents weren’t five hours drive away. Moving away from where I grew up means I don’t see some of my oldest friends anywhere near as often as I would like. A bit more cash wouldn’t be a bad thing too, particularly now that I am considering my future career after COVID-19 has decimated my business. Fortunately for me, while money is always useful and I would find life difficult without my espresso machine, Garmin watch and headphones, I have never been particularly interested in a costly materialistic lifestyle.
Moving on from the self-examination, I have decided that during 2021, I will celebrate making it to fifty with an operational brain and body by undertaking a series of twelve challenges, associated with the number 50. Fingers crossed that I can hold this run of luck for at least another year!
Having spent years chasing running times, I am used to linking challenges to completely arbitrary numbers. Things would have been a lot easier if I had decided to do this ten years ago when I could have chased a bunch of challenges related to 40. That said, 50 is a much better number and a more significant milestone, so I am not complaining.
All of these challenges reflect something about my life and interests. Some of them are physical and some are mental. Some involve sacrifice and some are indulgent. I think all of them require at least a bit of effort and I expect to fail to achieve or possibly even attempt some of them. I know that sounds a bit defeatist, but the most significant barrier will be finding the time. In many ways, though time is the whole point of this exercise. Watching my children grow up and with an ever-increasing interest in meditation, I have realised that I have been treating time with a lack of respect. I have often wished time away or failed to make the most of it. When my daughter is talking to me, I have gawped at my phone, I have contemplated my retirement or the prospect of a brighter more lucrative future, the end of the working week, the end of a boring film or conversation. Hundreds of things that one day, I will never do again. What I should have been focussing on is now. What I am doing right now and why I am doing it. There have been too many wasted days when I have promised myself that the next day will be more productive, while I should have been appreciating the good things that happened on that day.
So to draw this beginning to a close, here is a list of the things I want to achieve in my 50@50 challenge (dates are provisional):
1. Complete 50 consecutive press-ups (28th January)
2. 50 days on a vegan diet (28th February)
3. Run a 50-mile race (10th April)
4. Climb 50,000 feet in 50 days (May-June)
5. Visit a location at 50 degrees latitude (July)
6. 50-weeks alcohol-free (7th August)
7. Run a marathon in 2 hrs and 50~ minutes (3rd October)
8. Volunteer for 50 hours (by December)
9. Spend 50 hours learning to play a musical instrument
10. Memorise 50 elements from the Periodic Table
11. 50 hours of silence
12. Learn to touch type and reach a minimum speed of 50 WPM
The rules
I may change these as the year progresses, so perhaps guidelines would be more appropriate than rules. Also, some of the goals need more thought and planning but broadly speaking, I will try to:
· Complete a task every month
· Spend no more than 50 minutes writing a blog about each task
· The blog should be a 5-minute read or less
· Where possible provide evidence or demonstrate the completion of the task
· Involve family and friends in some way
That is it for now. I hope to continue this project for 2021, but who knows what will happen over the next twelve months. As this is not all set in stone, I’d be interested in hearing any other fifty-related suggestions or from anyone who wants to join or assist me for part of the quest. Now, I’m off to do some press-ups.
