Getting older is scary for the obvious reasons. There is a fear of becoming lonelier, weaker, irrelevant, unable to make up for your mistakes, or failing to achieve your goals. One of the biggest lessons I have learned is that life cares nothing for your plans or dreams.

A time will come when you will look back and evaluate how much of those plans materialized. This is one of the most crucial, and sometimes painful turning points, as it will force you to weigh the decisions you have made that improved your life, or not. 

Getting older involves becoming more self-aware, and there is no exit road. Those who are aware of their past choices, celebrating a new birthday doesn’t feel like a count-up, but rather a count-down to the eternal inability to turn things around. 

I’m not forty years old yet, and I don’t pretend to understand what it feels to be sixty or eighty, but at my age, I have moments where I think: “what could I have done differently?”

The mind constantly plays all sorts of tricks to make us believe we are doing the right thing. You may look at yourself in the mirror and think you don’t need to lose weight. Then you see yourself in a photo and suffer a meltdown. 

Denial works great as a defense mechanism. The longer you remain in it, there will be little you can do to stop people from trusting you, and it will evidently affect the relationships you have with them.

Getting older includes not only becoming more self-aware, but we expect more from others. This is why the younger generations get brutally criticized. As our patience grows thinner, we seek more guaranteed security, and spend a lot more time thinking about material wealth, rather than the emotional needs of strangers.

When we notice time is running out, our judgement may be so clouded that we ask ourselves: “have I had the fun I deserve? Are people taking advantage of me? Should I quit my responsibilities and choose to live the life I have always envisioned?”

I’m not sure if this type of thinking implies that midlife crisis is dawning upon me, or if this is an automatic process of self-evaluation we go through at the median age. Either way, it doesn’t get easier. We can only hope there is some reward to aging.

Whatever fate brings me in the coming years, I pray to avoid becoming one of those people who recite with sheer bitterness:

“If I knew then what I know now, my life would be  a lot better.”

Those who utter such words fail to realize they were given an opportunity to survive the treacheries they faced, and also an opportunity to receive great wisdom. Yet, they dwell in resentment, and self-destruct one drink, one inhale, or one bite at a time. 

Nobody is born with the perfect set of parents, in the perfect household, nor is there a school that teaches every trick and shortcut in life. All you have is a temporary window of time to make enough mistakes that don’t get you killed or imprisoned, and understand what not to do next. 

Who you want to learn from their successes or mishaps is up to you. The alternative is to give up, perpetually complain about your miseries, whether through self-hatred, or pointing the finger at an external cause, and live the remainder of your time driving people away from you.

Remember that you are the sole owner of the quill that writes your life story. At the end, you only have a brief opportunity to revisit what you have written on those pages, and decide whether or not you can rest peacefully with what you have done with your time.