What does turning 40 mean to you?

[Meaux]

I LOVE that you ladies are so optimistic about aging. Unfortunately, in our society the only age that is good is the young one. However, I can say that I am still confused and frustrated at 27. Maybe you will all start a movement to overturn this whole "younger is better" thing. When I hit 29, I'll come back and reanimate this thread for support.

[rocknrollgirl]

Freedom.....

I love being in my 40's.....the only downside for me is that it takes longer to recover from hard training, and if that is the worst of it, I will take it.

I am a better wife, daughter, sister, friend and teacher than I was 10 years ago. Compiled life experience gave me that gift, and I cherish it.

[Barb]

When I turned 40 I decided to be a kid again. I took up backpacking and hiked part of the AT. I also started riding. Now I am 43, resently single again and thinking... I am getting the hang of this! I still don't train hard, eat poorly and spend too much time alone in my house, but that is changing. I'm my mind, I am 28...now I have to convince my body of that!


This may be my new signature!!!!
For all those men who say, "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free", here's an update for you. Now 80% of women are against marriage, why? Because women realize it's not worth buying an entire pig, just to get a little sausage.

[Tuckervill]

Unfortunately, in our society the only age that is good is the young one.

Well, I'd say that's a matter of opinion!

There are 4 pages of posts here that disagree with yours.

Karen

[Meaux]

Well, I'd say that's a matter of opinion!

There are 4 pages of posts here that disagree with yours.

Karen

I guess what I meant was that pop culture thinks that.

[tygab]

Meaux, it's easy to see it this way, which I think makes it particularly hard to be someone transitioning out of the 20s into 'everything else.' I think the buzz/hype around youth is two-fold.

First, I think this in large part a product of the entertainment media. If you step away from the light of entertainment (including most professional sports) world, the 'real life' interactions between 20somethings and older people mostly favor the older people. The older people are usually the ones with more power, money, and stability through social bonds to family, colleagues, and social organizations. In other words, in day-to-day life, it's the older people who usually have what the younger people want [even though they might not admit it - I mean stability, ugh, that sounds so boring!].

I am in tech, and rode the Internet wave as a fresh college grad in the mid 90s. The late 90s were so interesting with the dotcom era because for a while this dynamic was tantalizingly flipped around with recent college graduates (or dropouts) or otherwise generally not qualified people left and right founding the next great thing company. Of course, why the VCs went for this so often I've no idea, but they were acting like the entertainment industry, motivated more out of fear of being left behind than what was necessary to build stability.

Well, that didn't last. It couldn't - the leadership & life experience to create organizations with longevity was largely lacking. A few companies (and their founders) made it perhaps due to a combination of luck, some truly breakthrough tech, or sheer perseverance, but most failed. And people in blue-suit traditional companies either looked on with bemusement at what was going on, or wondered if they were missing out.

The entertainment industry is one place in our society where life experience doesn't usually mean a whole lot, at least on the public side. What seems to matter most is cornering 'the next big thing' under your label, in your movie, on your team etc.

The 2nd part is I think young adults (loosely defined as late teens through mid twenties) are particularly influenced by pop culture - because at that age we are for the first time able to make our own choices yet so unsure of what choices to make. It take some time to sort this out and get on a path of any kind. Most of us will continue to reevaluate and adjust this throughout our lives, but we'll do so with some perspective and hindsight as a foundation.

I guess, what I mean is - if one wants to see a society that values youth seemingly above all else, pop culture is a ready way to do that. But if one wants to see a society that values age and wisdom and life experience, that's just as available. So, I'd ask why do you care about what the pop culture portrays

[Meaux]

I don't understand why I am being attacked for complimenting everyone here. I don't particularly care about what pop culture says and thinks, I was mostly stating a point. The general culture is youth-obsessed and I think it's very sad.