Dearest Friend,

A few days ago, the countdown began – 50 days to 50 years.

It’s a BIG birthday year for me, the one that felt incomprehensible a few decades ago. With a slight addiction to commemorative ritual, I counted backwards on the calendar to come up with the day that marked the last 50 days before my second half begins.

I racked my brain for something momentous to track these 7 weeks. A poem a day? Doing a push-up challenge, from one to 50? Stopping everything and going on sabbatical?

Nothing has felt quite right. Although uncertainty is tickling the back of my neck, I am pushing against this forced demonstration that I’M STILL HERE. I don’t want to prove I’m still young and capable. I don’t want to prove that 50 is the new 30. I don’t want to prove anything.

My 30^th and 40^th were grand affairs, involving Beverly Hills hotels, red velvet capes, all night parties and even a tiara. I couldn’t have been more boldly excited.

This one feels different. Not as good, I admit.

I imagined the celebration might involve sequins, Vegas and nonstop champagne, but none of those sound remotely appealing. I long for a quiet cabin in a remote location, with occasional cameos from my loved ones. With that vision, my body relaxes.

Maybe this reaction, from a die-hard celebration-lover, reflects how rough these recent years have been. Maybe my wild ways are placing themselves firmly in my past. Maybe I’m afraid.

The number of unknowns grows the more I think of it.

On one side is fear. On the other side is hope. This decade (and the ones that follow, God willing) has the potential to be the best one yet. All the discipline and effort and attention I’ve sown until this point has cultivated a rich soil, ready to nourish the finest seeds. I actually like the person I’ve grown into, which I can see is no small gift. My strength is appearing in surprising ways. My life is morphing into greater and greater truth.

And yet… even with this recognition, the indefinable discomfort remains.

The nature of the fluttery resistance I can’t shake appears to me like a desire to feel the ground more solidly under my feet, while knowing the futility of that pursuit. There is sadness about the idea that there are almost certainly more days behind me than ahead of me, and gladness about the years I have lived.

It is disorienting and distracting. It puts a dark shadow on my natural inclination for festivity.

And then I remember: these arbitrary demarcations of time just trick us into forgetting that there is no beginning and no end. There is no reason to believe that the tide of blessings carrying my life will diminish or disappear. In fact, there is no reason to believe that there isn’t magnificence waiting for me… waiting for the ‘me’ ready and willing to say YES.

And then I forget… again.

It turns itself around in my head, like a caramel I roll over and under my tongue.

I hope that by the time it fully dissolves, I will have recognized how sweet it was.