Forty

A friend told me this morning that 40s is the best decade and yes, I am so on board with this.

And not in a let’s try to make the most out of this situation by forcing myself to believe it’s great when it’s not kind of way either. I actually do think it’s one of those secrets people who have turned 40 keep to themselves and I’m pleasantly surprised at how nice being 40 is.

So I read this article recently about a lady who signed up with a dating agency and was unhappy with her potential matches so she wanted a refund. Granted, she had a list of demands that made her seem borderline persnickety but what I found fascinating was the comment section. It was a lot of people reminding her that she’s already 40 and should have no business being this demanding. One comment referred to her as “no spring chicken” and “clearly an auntie”, which now that I’m 40, I IDENTIFY with these descriptions. Having once been a spring chicken myself, I can definitively say that being poultry is overrated, regardless of how succulent one might appear to be.

On that note, I’ve also long since embraced being called auntie. A few weeks ago, we were playing 3-on-3 basketball with a bunch of teenagers at the nearby court and one of the kids was like “eh, you go mark the auntie” and he immediately caught himself and was all like “uh, sorry, I mean…” and I was like “boy ah, my son is your age so I expect nothing less than being called auntie. In fact, I would be offended if you called me anything else.” I did nail a jumper in the kid’s face but guess what? That’s what us aunties do.

Being 40 has its challenges for sure. I feel my body wearing down after taking a beating for 4 whole decades. My left shoulder has been in constant pain for years, my knees are completely busted, my hair is turning white, my pelvic floor is gone, and I’ve come to terms with having routine medical check ups as a part of my life from here on out.

At the same time, I’m also fitter than I’ve ever been in my entire life. I’ve been on a HIIT program 5 days a week for the past 3 years and I run 5km every other week. I just clocked in at 27 minutes for my 5km this week and that’s faster than I ran when I was 18. I feel like if Mariko Yugeta, the Japanese lady who ran a sub-3 marathon at 62 can do it, I can probably keep this up right to my 60s.

If there’s one thing that I enjoy most about being 40, it’s the sense of freedom to just be me. Even when I wasn’t consciously doing it, it always felt like I was striving to prove something all through my 20s and for some of my 30s. I needed to be better, more successful, achieve more, have more kids, work more, do more, be more – and maybe it was just to prove to myself that I could do all of these things.

I felt like my life needed to be filled with all these adventures because it’s what makes for a better life. And to be sure, it is delightful to be be sipping wine in the Swiss alps and partaking in a fancy Miyazaki beef dinner, but it is just as delightful to have a $3.50 bowl of ban mian just because I enjoy it. I had it for dinner last night and it occurred to me that this bowl of noodles was comforting and delicious and it brought me joy.

I get to make decisions because it’s what I want to do instead of worrying about whether it makes me look a certain way. It’s the freedom to do work that makes me happy and to walk away from things that don’t, even if it’s something that everyone says is great. I get to enthusiastically enjoy all of life’s experiences, even the basic, boring, uncool ones.

All this to say that it’s only day 1 of being in my 40s and I’m already loving it. I woke up to my favourite person in the world and had my babies walking up to me to give me birthday kisses throughout the day.

Here’s to enjoying the best decade.