20 reasons to be cheerful in middle age
- Mar 30, 2016
- 3 min read
Life satisfaction plummets between the ages of 45 and 59, according to a new survey (my previous article). Why? We struggle to juggle family and work commitments, apparently.
There’s more to it than that. The middle aged have got receding hairlines and advancing waistlines; we can’t get it up and we no longer know how to get down; we lose out parking-space-wise to sartorially challenged fluffheads, and life doesn’t make sense in a world in which David Bowie is no longer alive and pyjamas are OK on the school run. People like me (I’m 53) might as well just give up and die. Mightn’t we? On the contrary, here are 20 reasons to be cheerful when you’re middle-aged.
1 Ridicule, as Adam Ant argued, is nothing to be scared of
There’s a bloke who works in my library cafe. He wears a tricorn hat and a possibly silk frock coat. He must be about my age and he gives off a superb “nuts-to-whatever-you’re-thinking-about-me” vibe. Sir, I salute you. Remember when you were young and didn’t wear stuff that might attract peer-group disdain? When you’re middle-aged, those days are over. Score!
2 Teeth: the unbearable truth
Bad news! All your fillings are from the 70s and are disintegrating. Good news! Modern fillings don’t look like they’re made of old Ladas and you can afford to have the dental treatment!
3 Happy the tortoise, not the hare
Some may think that it’s sad that middle-aged duffers can’t run or walk as fast as they could. Not so. Think of it this way. Sure, we could shave half an hour off rail journey times by building HS2. But does anybody actually want to get to Birmingham faster? Or, once being in Birmingham, to leave any faster than normal? In both cases, obviously not. The same is more generally true: one of the pleasures of middle age is really appreciating the flowers and car crashes that younger people heedlessly race past.
4 You’re older, wiser and don’t get fooled by surveys any more
I don’t mean to suggest that all surveys giving age-related breakdowns of self-reported well being are assembled by self-justifying twentysomething numpties posing as sober objective scholars, but often it seems that way. Consider this possibility. The leading reason for those under 45 in the Measuring National Well-Being study reporting that they’re relatively happier is because they’re in denial about how unhappy they are. Not just because they’re more likely to live with their parents than I was and face a future living on a planet that me and my ancestors have despoiled, but also because soon they’ll be 45 and, by their own lights, more miserable than they claim to be now. Losers.
5 After middle age comes old age. Result!
Middle-aged people like me can look forward with glee to happy old age. According to the study, those aged 90 and over reported higher life satisfaction and happiness compared with people in their middle years. And that fact alone makes middle-aged people happier, thus confounding the survey’s dubious results. True, the greater happiness of those over 90 may be because they have forgotten what they were miserable about, but that doesn’t matter. And the greater happiness of those under 45 may be because they’re too thick to appreciate how utterly bleak, miserable and cold the universe is, but again that doesn’t matter. The point is the prospect of old age is another reason for the middle-aged to be cheerful. As Blackadder put it: “I want to be young and wild, and then I want to be middle-aged and rich, and then I want to be old and annoy people by pretending I’m deaf.” I can’t wait for that last bit.
6 You can pretend to be a technophobe
The other day, some lovely Danish tourists asked me to take their photo with their phone outside the British Museum. I did, then blew on it and shook it like a Polaroid picture. They walked off chuckling, no doubt, about the old fart who had lost the plot. Which, in a sense, I have. But, still, the joke was on them. Which cheered me up no end.
7 You know how to take your pleasures where you can get them
I was at yoga the other night with some very attractive women. “You have a lovely bottom,” said the French instructor. I looked round – in a room full of lithe youngsters, she was talking to me! I’ve still got it, I thought happily. “But,” she added, “would you point it away from my face?” Then I noticed everybody else in the room was doing their cat’s pose with their bottoms pointing the other way. I was 180 degrees to the room. Did I feel depressed at being the Corporal Jones in this scenario? No – I felt cheered by a French lady praising my bottom. Albeit ironically.
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