Twenty years are nothing, Gardel sang but… forty?
When a friend of mine is asked how old she is, she inexorably replies: “forty plus one, plus two,…” and so it continues every year. Finally the group of friends has decided that it is going through the crisis of "forty plus one". The inspiration to write this article comes to me from a phrase, wonderful for me, that a philosopher friend on the verge of turning fifty sent me, I propose it below: "I'm alive and I want to stay and feel good with what I do and with what I want to do. In short, it is a way of understanding that happiness is possible and achievable even if a disease called 'aging' has occurred, but life has not yet abandoned us ... "After forty the person begins to experience a series of physical changes , he realizes that his body is changing and that he is not responding with the same agility and speed as in previous years. Maybe some memory problem arises and creativity is no longer the same. Everyone around him denies him the role of the young man and pigeons him in the role of the adult who began his decline. If you have children, the difference is even more accentuated due to intergenerational discrepancies. Faced with so many inevitable changes it is normal for the person to worry and ask himself a question: what will my life be like from now on? At this moment three different attitudes can appear: those who deny their age and claim to maintain a youth that is now gone, those who literally "let themselves die" and spend half the time complaining about what they can no longer do or those who take change with a positive outlook by attempting to find the benefits beyond superficial changes. Two skills are essential to face the changes caused by the passage of time: the possibility of restoring the field of action by accepting changes as an intrinsic part of development and the possibility of generating the meaning of life. Of course, if the person in his youth was extremely rigid in his behaviors and decisions, he will hardly be able to accept the new limits that age imposes on him in a positive perspective. Entering late maturity does not only imply accepting changes and finding a way to reorganize oneself so as to be able to enjoy all that continues to be enjoyable, but it must be converted into a moment of reflection that offers us new perceptions and ways of understanding the life. This new stage does not imply leaving those things that we were passionate about but looking for new forms to be able to enjoy the same activities and create new projects and interests. It is the possibility of self-motivating and growing as a person, now, and thanks to the knowledge offered to us by our experience. The possibility of being happy is more at the hands of people of advanced age rather than young people, or at least so the psychologists and some studies carried out assure us. As we turn forty we should be able to determine what is truly important to each of us. Trying to see the reality of the environment in which we live in the right perspective, and we should learn to be more flexible and avoid stressful situations. However, this is useless if we consider and assume physical and social changes as the beginning of decline and loss of faculty. Life from the age of forty presents us with new challenges that can be as difficult and complex as the new situations we found ourselves having to face when we were teenagers. Being happy and learning from every experience is a matter of personal attitude rather than age. Making our life happy is a choice, regardless of age. It is never too late if you have the desire to do so and people close to us offer their support.
