From career pressures to family responsibilities, a 39-year-old reflects on time, changing priorities and why it is never too late to pursue personal dreams.
I THINK I am having a midlife crisis. Not the glamorous kind where a woman buys a sports car, chops off her hair and disappears to Bali to find herself. Mine comes with deadlines, bills, laundry and children who somehow need something every five minutes.
But lately, I have been asking myself a question that feels strangely uncomfortable. Is this it?
I turned 39 this year and while that may not sound particularly old, it has made me look at my life a little differently. Not because everything is going wrong but because everything keeps moving and I am beginning to wonder where the time went.
When we are 20, we think we have forever. We make plans, dream big and imagine that by 40, we will have our lives neatly figured out – career sorted, money sorted and happiness sorted.
At 39, I can confirm that nobody sends you a manual when you become an adult. You are simply expected to know what you are doing while frantically Googling things in private.
The funny thing is, life gets so busy that we barely notice ourselves changing. We work, raise children, care for our parents, maintain friendships and keep the household running.
We become someone’s mother, someone’s wife, someone’s daughter, someone’s colleague. We become very good at being needed.
But somewhere along the way, we forget to ask ourselves what we need. Rest? Later. That holiday? Maybe next year. That dream? Perhaps when things settle down.
Except things never really settle down, do they? There is always another bill, another deadline, another responsibility. And before we know it, we have spent years putting ourselves at the bottom of our own priority list.
Perhaps that is what makes this stage of life so unsettling. From the outside, everything may look perfectly fine. Yet inside, there is a little voice asking whether this is the life we imagined for ourselves. Maybe yours comes at 35. Maybe 42. Maybe 50.
It may look like questioning your career, feeling disconnected from old friendships or wondering when your days became so predictable. It may mean looking at old photographs and missing the younger version of yourself who had fewer responsibilities and seemingly, more possibilities.
Or perhaps you simply want to sit in your car for 10 minutes before going home, enjoying the silence because nobody is asking you for anything. Surely, I cannot be the only one.
I have also noticed that what matters to me is changing. The need to prove myself is slowly giving way to a desire for peace. I have less patience for unnecessary drama and less interest in impressing people who do not really matter to me.
These days, a quiet evening, a good conversation and enough energy to get through tomorrow sound like excellent achievements.
And don’t get me started on my metabolism. Apparently, it has decided to pursue other interests. But beneath the jokes is something more serious – the growing awareness that time is not endless.
Our children grow up. Our parents grow older. Friends move away. People we assumed would always be around may not be. The things we keep postponing suddenly seem less certain.
It makes me wonder how many times we have said “one day” without realising that one day is not guaranteed.
Perhaps a midlife crisis is not necessarily about wanting to escape the life we have built. Maybe it is about finally examining it.
Are we happy? Are we exhausted? Are we still chasing dreams that no longer belong to us? Have we become so busy meeting everyone’s expectations that we have forgotten our own?
I don’t have the answers yet. I am still figuring things out, and admitting that at 39 feels both embarrassing and liberating.
Maybe we do not need to tear our lives apart or make dramatic changes to prove we are still alive. Perhaps we just need to make room for ourselves again.
Call that friend. Take that trip. Start that hobby. Rest without feeling guilty. Say no when we mean no. And stop waiting for life to become less complicated before allowing ourselves to enjoy it.
If you are somewhere in your 30s, 40s or 50s, quietly wondering whether you have missed your chance to become the person you wanted to be, perhaps you haven’t. Maybe you are not lost, you are simply changing.
At 39, I am learning that growing older does not mean having all the answers. Sometimes, it means finally being brave enough to ask the questions.
And perhaps the most important one is this: After spending so much of our lives being everything to everyone else, isn’t it time we asked ourselves what we want, too?
Hashini Kavishtri Kannan is the news editor at theSun.
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