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Turning 40 isn’t that hard
Thoughts I didn’t know I had about reaching that age, and how I turned some negativity around.
In four days, I’ll be forty years old.
I could give a hundred different meanings to that fact.
I could be scared.
I could feel like I belong with the ‘grown ups’ now. That I should do something different with my hair, my clothes.
That I should fit to and adapt to my age, whatever that may look like. Because feeling ‘young’ is probably out of the question from now on.
There’s this sort of ‘social fascination’ with being young (and beautiful, and slim). ‘People’ tell us that we’re supposed to look like XYZ and that’s what we see all around us in the media. Just compare current television shows to the series in the ’70’s and ’80’s. ‘Bones’ vs ‘Jessica Fletcher’ says enough… And when we see this all the time, it becomes a standard to live up to. Even without really noticing.
Yesterday, I ‘confessed’ to a group of teens I’m rehearsing a play with, that I’d be forty by the time we rehearse again (next week). One of the students shouted out: ‘Huh? I thought you were in your early 30’s, 34 or something like that!’
