50

Fifty! What can be said about this? As far I know, whatever we may say will be nothing that can be taken as an absolute truth or even be taken as something interesting. It will depend, of course, on who you are, where are you coming from and where are you going to. Definitely, when a man is fifty is already someone over the mid age which means, for the majority of live human beings, someone already at the door of third age⁽¹⁾! When a man is in the third age then he is someone who will be seen as no more than a grandparent, therefore only useful to look after his grandchildren, and a candidate to a seat in the public central garden of his city for playing cards with his friends. Life is cruel, isn’t it?

Mankind takes too long to be self-sufficient. We take long months to get rid of our mother’s breast, we are pacifier⁽²⁾ dependent for a long time, we take long years to walk by ourselves, we take even more years to talk well enough to be understood, we need decades to be economically powerful enough to buy our own clothes and we strive for three quarters of our life to be owners of it, our own life, with a minimum acceptable level of happiness. When we get all this, which in many cases is not that much, and we start having that good feeling of partial achieved success, there is always that day when someone is pulling our arm, with a kind expression on the face, to give us a seat in the bus…

Exagerated? Yes, it is. However, there is a bit of truth in all this because at fifty, nobody (whether is a man or a woman) is any longer taken as a young somebody! For those over forty still thinking they are young people cause they don’t know the definition of “elderly”, check it out here:

There is often a general physical decline, and people become less active. Old age can cause, amongst other things:

• wrinkles and liver spots on the skin
• change of hair color to gray or white
• hair loss
• lessened hearing
• diminished eyesight
• slower reaction times and agility
• reduced ability to think clearly
• difficulty recalling memories
• lessening or cessation of sex, sometimes because of physical symptoms such as erectile dysfunction in men, but often simply a
• decline in libido
• greater susceptibility to bone diseases such as osteoarthritis

The probability of you answering yes to the majority of above items when you are over forty is considerably high, isn’t it? Even so, you still need math to get convinced? Ok, easy… Let us say that the actual life expectancy of human beings is eighty. Half of that is forty. A decade is a fair amount to be taken as a tolerance for the natural deviation in this type of calculations. Half of that is five. Therefore, mid-age is defined as the life’s phase between 35 and 45.

If we take the age for retirement as a reference, in Portugal it would be 65. It means you would be considered as a third age member only at that age. However, you might be taken as a burden for society much before that, depending only on the way your professional life flows. If you are over forty and if you have the bad luck of getting fired or permanently laid off then you will be able to understand what I mean. Furthermore, it is easy to see how you are seen in the labor world if you have a look at a popular newspaper and go through the classified ads offering jobs: you will not find many for what the required age goes above 40! However, you have to keep yourself active up to 65 because only from then on the Social Security will be the source of your income. See? We better don’t get fired after forty…

Today is the day from when on I will never use again the sentence “I’m getting old ”. I will replace it by “I’m old” and I will be expecting pity, mercy, compassion, commiseration and many other signs of sympathy for my grief. Today is the beginning of my stage to prepare myself to the inevitable rendez-vous with my andropause. I will face like a hero the decline of my libido or even the cessation of sex. I will see beauty in every wrinkle on my face. I will keep believing my gray hair, slowly turning to white (while I have it), is very sexy. I will convince myself that my slower and everyday less clear thoughts it is a sign of wisdom. In a word: I’m done.

May the gods be with me…