Reflexions when you turn 40

This year I began my fourth decade. Last year, just six months before, I called my best friend and asked her to organize a "surprise" birthday party for me. As always, she did as promised and it was celebrated in a rural accommodation in the south part of Tenerife island.

Surrounded by banana trees, with a swimmingpool, kitchen and common spaces for our own enjoyment, we started to spend the day celebrating my first forty years. Everyone that had to be there was there (except for my family, that couldn´t come over). I´ve got old friends (in time) but also lately I´ve met wonderful people that helped me go ahead and marked me for life... We finished the party early in the morning the next day, playing like kids: I will never forget those shared moments with my loved ones.... Many of them are waiting for my 50th anniversary!

This year I´ve been thinking about all that I´ve lived these years. The conclusion is that I´ve been blessed with many opportunities that made me meet great people along the way...

When I was a child, I imagine myself as a forty year-old person with stability in all dimensions of my life: personal, job...; a person devoted to her stable family after some years of doing the same; a person with a University career that would work to keep the family; a person that wouldn´t need to think about anything else but what to wear or to cook for the next day... That´s how forty year-old people looked like when I was a child.

Time changed this situation.

The reality has been different: I´ve had uncertainty in my personal life (untill a few years ago) and in my work life (today). I didn´t have a stable relationship but many in these last twenty years. The fact that I´ve finished a university career or having a good level or English or German has meant nothing to get a stable job. Kids didn´t arrive but one, because the circumstances doesn´t let me bring a sibling to my daughter. Since I finished school I only had one season of crisis (sometimes harder, somethimes milder)...

Life doesn´t bring you what you want but what your really need. Many people of my age planned their lives so much that, when everything started to fall down, they felt defrauded and disconcerted. It seems that the world goes round faster and faster. We just finish to adapt to the circumstances, when we have to plan new changes in our lives, so we don´t stay behind. One positive thinking: this brings us the opportunity to "extend" our youth, because we have to do what we did when we were younger. That´s why people say that the new forties are like the old thirties.

There is a Chinese curse that says: "I wish you live in time of changes". This is really a bad wish thrown to us: uncertainty, changes, alterations... Anonimam Hombre Anónimo* says in his last poster: "You have to jump" (or something similar)... I don´t think the word "constantly" could fit in.

Well, if at forty I´m reflecting like this, I don´t want to imagine how bore I could become in ten years... I´ll try not to think so much, but I´ll act and update myself every day...

*Anonimam Hombre Anónimo.- An artist that reflects his work of art throught a poster that can be read from the A5 (a motorway in Tenerife).
(First published on http://maritza-gonzalez.blogspot.com/ on December 9th 2010)