Forty: the new 30?

I keep hearing it said that forty is the new thirty, and I am considering this proposition. There is a word in the Old Testament that comes to mind. This word is “Selah” and its use is similar to “Amen” in that it stresses the significance of what precedes it, however, it is generally taken to mean that one should pause and reflect on what has been said. Although it occurs seventy-one times in thirty-nine of the Psalms, and three times in Habakkuk, the etymology and precise meaning of the word remain unknown. When I hear or read absurdities like “forty is the new thirty” it is time for me to Selah – to pause and reflect.

Having dismissed my class for the holiday break, and having very little ambition to do any further “real work” today, I decided that a search for the identity of the pinhead that coined this phrase might illuminate matters. Like many such slogans, nailing down the exact source was not easy, but I was able to trace it back to a 2005 Reuters article. The article was written about a research study conducted by Warren C. Sanderson of the University of New York in Stony Brook and Sergei Scherbov of the Vienna Institute of Demography at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. This was a scholarly demographic study published in Nature. The researchers found that life expectancies in many industrialized nations were increasing at a rate equal to or greater than the corresponding median ages of the populations of these countries. They argued that this explained the phenomenon of aging populations that seem to be getting younger (at least in terms of their behavior). Selah.

Whoever spun this bit of statistical masturbation into “forty is the new thirty” may never be known (at least by me) but I find it highly unlikely that they were in their forties. Consider the following self-observations: My idea of a really wild night these days is mixing a little regular in with my decaf. I hiss when cellular phones go off in public venues. I punch the person who says, "Denial isn't just a river in Africa, you know" and laugh when anyone uses the word "closure" in a purportedly emotionally insightful manner. I’m temperamentally incapable of using the following phrases: "Oh – My – God!"; "And I'm like ..."; "And she's all ..."; "Whatever!” But, oddly, not "Well, duh." I know harmless office flirting may not be so harmless. I don't want to end up a dirty old man. I know that texting has passed me by. When I stand and stretch in the morning my joints sound like a Chinese New Year celebration. I am less certain of things than I used to be. I think younger people who wear hooded sweatshirts with the hood up look stupid and sinister. I cross the street to avoid them. When in the bathroom, I spend more time sitting on porcelain than standing at the mirror. That time at the mirror is spent worrying about too much hair where it shouldn’t be and not enough where it should. I find solace in birdsong. None of the aforementioned was true when I was thirty. Selah.

Forty: the new 30? I think I would say, rather that forty doesn’t suck the way I thought it might, when I was thirty. Just as thirty turned out not to suck nearly as much as I thought it would when I was twenty-one; In fact, thirty turned out not to suck at all. The chief difference, as far as I can tell, lies in the physical toll that four-plus decades of fast living has taken on a body that was really only designed by nature to reach the age of thirty-five. On the whole, however, it is a good exchange as the experience and wisdom that I’ve gained far offset the aches and pains that I’ve accumulated. How we perceive these changes is a choice that we each must make for ourselves. Is the proverbial glass half-empty?

"As I give thought to the matter, I find four causes for the apparent misery of old age: first, it withdraws us from active accomplishments; second, it renders the body less powerful; third, it deprives us of almost all forms of enjoyment; fourth, it stands not far from death." Cicero.

Or is it half-full?

"People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live...[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born." Albert Einstein.

Selah.