Count To Ten – How We Change With Each Decade

We put a lot of stalk in the passing of a decade.

Once we reach that all-important 21^st birthday milestone, we divide our lives by the tens.

Look at all the Hallmark birthday cards. You won’t find one for turning 31 or 42. It’s the passing of one decade to the next that matters.

Turning 30 is our official ticket to adulthood. Turning 40 is the ‘Big One’, the undeniable first baby step into middle age. Some take it hard. Many have a mid-life crisis involving all kinds of distractions; another man/woman, a bigger house/car, or a new body part to convince the old one that time is not running out.

Then we hit 50. The decade of ‘Get What You Want Before It’s Too Late’.

My husband Peter believes every decade we want something different – that we are driven by different needs, responsibilities and desires.

It makes sense to me. Let’s break it down.

The Happy-Go-Lucky 20s

The decade of ‘playing at being an adult while keeping Mom & Dad on speed-dial.’ You’ve been waiting a long time for this – the chance to have your own place, call your own shots and decide what it is you want to do with the rest of your life.

You’re likely finishing a degree of some kind, convincing yourself you’ve found the love-of-your-life. You may or may not marry. This is the decade where the bricks you lay both in your personal and professional lives matter. They are the foundation upon which the next decade is built.

It’s also the age where reality bites.

You are expected to pay your own bills while saving to buy your first home. Gone are the days of partying until the wee hours and not worrying if you don’t wake up ‘til noon. You’ve got responsibilities now.

Welcome to wanna-be adulthood.

The 30s – The Decade of Having It All

This is the decade of building your life. You’re working hard on your career, putting in the hours, trying to climb the ladder.

You’re a full-fledged adult now. You know you’re in your prime and you want to make it count. It’s the decade many of us marry and start a family. It’s also the decade where your stress meter is pushed to the limit. You’re juggling career and children and losing your mind under the weight of it all.

But you don’t tell anyone.

You keep pushing yourself, try harder, because just around the corner, 40 lurks. And you know you better have your sh#t together before that happens.

Oh, the stress of it all!!

Having said that, I convince myself on a regular basis that I’m still 37. For me, this is the age when I peaked in every way. I was the fittest I’d ever been and I was thriving in my career. But I was still struggling in my love life.

I remember the buildup to the millennium. It was the year I was turning 37. There was a lot of panicked talk around all technology crashing when the clocks ticked over from 1999 to 2000. Big parties were being planned all over the world to celebrate the arrival of the new millennia.

I was invited to a big bash downtown with someone I had been dating for a while. It was a relationship I knew was going nowhere.

The man I really loved lived thousands of miles away and despite many starts and stops, we couldn’t seem to get it together. So I had settled for something less.

The last night of 1999, I had dinner with my family then went home to change into my beautiful gown and head to the party of all parties in Vancouver.

While I was getting ready, something strange happened. I just felt strongly I had to make this milestone in humanity count for something. I knew I did not want to go into the new millennia with the baggage of the old one.

So I hung up my gown, poured a bubble bath, shut off my phone and opened a bottle of Dom Perignon I’d chilled for the occasion.

I spent the turning of one millennia to the next alone in my pajamas, sipping champagne and watching coverage of a party across the country that I knew my real love was filming.

I raised a glass to him at midnight and one to me too. To encourage myself to have the courage to change, to believe that love would find a way.

Which brings me to the next decade, where at least for me, it all started to come together.

The Big 4-0

The ‘Big One’. Why do we call it that? Maybe because a generation ago turning 40 marked the halfway point of average life expectancy.

If on your 40^th birthday you don’t have the life you dreamed of it can hit you hard. It’s a time of reflection, of looking at your life choices and deciding if you made the right ones. Or if the ones you made still fit.

I spent the day after my 40^th birthday in bed (alone) with the blankets pulled over my head. I felt so sad and I couldn’t put my finger on it. The memory sticks with me because I have rarely felt so blue.

I knew it meant I should pay attention; figure out what was missing in my life and try to change it.

For many people, it’s a ‘cup is half empty’ feeling about this halfway mark in life instead of a ‘cup is half full’. And this can lead to depression. And stupid behavior. Like having an affair, spending a fortune on cosmetic surgery or buying a car you can’t afford.

Pick your midlife crisis.

But it can also be the decade when the first hint of, ‘is this it? Is this all? Maybe I can change my life. Maybe I should change my life’ hits many of us.

It happened to me. In my early 40s, I took a long, hard look at my life and decided I wanted a big change. I wasn’t sure exactly what. I just knew I wanted a different life. It’s what lead to me packing it in for two years and moving to a stone cottage in Italy with my then-boyfriend Peter (hint: the very same ‘real love’ from my party-of-one millennium bash).

And what lead to us finally deciding to get married after years of ups and downs caused in many ways by focusing on our careers. I talk about this time in our lives and how it changed me; how it changed us, in other posts because it was so fundamental to the life changes we then made in our 50s.  

I will always remember my 40s as the decade where I woke up and finally began to ask myself for more.

The decade of ‘The Midlife Shift’ as I call it. Somewhere in your 50s it dawns on you that you’ve lost caring what people think of you. You’re not bothered if someone doesn’t approve of how you look or how you live your life. You just don’t give a damn.

It’s amazingly liberating.

You throw off the shackles of conforming to a norm and you decide to live life on your own terms. Now what do you do with this newfound liberation? You go out and get what you what. What you really, really want. If not now, when?

For us, this was the genesis of our midlife shift: the realization that the life we were living – while it was great – wasn’t the one we wanted anymore. We thought there was no better time than in our 50s to start all over again.

For most of us, our 50s finds us in good health, free of child rearing responsibilities and likely already at the top of the career ladder.

If you’re going to jump off, take a leap into the unknown, there’s no better decade.

So if you were going to jump, where would you jump to?

Who would you jump with? And what would you jump for?

Food for thought for the midlife soul.

A presto

Anna