IT’S OKAY. You have reached 50 now and you are reading everywhere that this is a whole new stage of life. It has been referred to as a Second Adult Age or Second Act or the Bonus Decades. What does all this mean and why is it so hard for us to understand it?
The simplest answer is that our parents and grandparents never really spent time thinking about how their lives might be different as they got older. They grew up, got married, had kids, maybe retired, had grandkids, and never gave much thought to how they felt about it. They only were. They only made. However, the Boomers and the tail of the pre-boomers are different. You have spent your entire life thinking about who you are and your place in the world. We may have to create new terms – Senior Citizens, perhaps – when this group reaches 90, as an ever-increasing number will.
For now, I’ve decided to call this profound rethink between 40 and 60 years of adulthood. Why? Because, as you will soon see, the similarities with adolescence are very strong.
The two halves of life have different agendas. The first half of life is focused on developing a personality and building a sense of self that is the ego. In other words, as a teenager, you focused on being somehow different from the rest of the pack, while still somehow blending in. This could have meant having the shortest skirt or the brightest yellow-green hair or the tattered jeans. As an adult, you want the same. This could mean the best facelift, the latest hot car, or the best golf clubs.
Adolescence implies the differentiation of skills and abilities so that you can be all that you can be. You drove everyone crazy with new passions: become a drummer; save the environment; choose the perfect theme as a specialization; participate in protests; listen to the Stones. The second half of life involves the integration or coming together of all the disparate parts to form a unified whole. In reality, nothing has changed. Please review the list above. Well some of the Stones are more gray and the Beatles will never get together.
Romance is new to teens. Countless hours are spent trying to look good. You’re trying to figure out how to be a couple. You hang on the phone comparing notes with your friends. Nothing new here for adults either. If you’ve stayed married, you’re trying to figure out how to suddenly be a couple in the same space at the same time. My aunt used to quote an old truism: I married him for better or worse, but not for lunch.” To look good.
The body of a teenager is changing all the time. Adultescent? Yours is too. Teenagers have flaws. Adults have liver spots. Teenagers have growing pains. Adults have bread attached. Both groups are always watching their weight.
Teenagers are often known by their possessions: first a car, a phone, a computer and an iPod (well, for some of you it was a typewriter and a stereo), fashionable clothes. Young adults are just as busy amassing toys: new sports car or Hummer, cell phone, ipod, Blackberry, laptop.
Teenagers tend to travel in groups. Teenagers believe they will never grow up. And the adults? No need to comment.
So, you see, everything old is new again. You survived adolescence. You will survive this too. You already know how to do this. The biggest difference is that you can finally do it all over again knowing what you know now. Do not regret, move forward boldly. You can become a completely different second adult from the person you were as the first adult, or you can be exactly the same but richer, deeper, and happier.
Enjoy the trip!
