This Is Forty

Working with kids who have only been alive for roughly a third of my years has its advantages, perhaps the most important being that when most of your shirts are dirty and you decide to wear the school-issued uniform polo because it’s clean, they sometimes confuse you for a student.  The week of my fortieth birthday, it happened twice.  Happy birthday to me.

However, to keep me grounded firmly in my aging reality, I had to renew my driver’s license the same week, which meant a new picture.  Anyone who knows me understands that my poor, light-sensitive, blue eyes ruined my shot at a modeling career because a flash immediately makes me look like a crazy stalker trying to suck your soul out with my startling wide-open eyes.  (For photographic evidence, you can check out the “Crazy Eyes McGee” photo album on Facebook, or the collages from my dear friend Nicole.)  In addition to the crazy eyes, I also have fair skin, for which I should wear sunscreen daily.  I did not wear said sunscreen last weekend at my kickball doubleheader, and ended up with a sunburn resembling raccoon markings on my face, topped off with a nose bright enough to rival Rudolph’s.  Those same dear students looked at me in horror, asking repeatedly either why I was mad all day or if was I sunburned.  Suffice it to say, between the eyes and the red, I will only be going places that do not require a photo ID for the next decade.

Such is the dichotomy of forty, at least what I can gather from this new phenomenon.  And the good part is that I’m settling into a place in life where I can take both in stride.  Maybe this is due to the major life construction that happened in the last decade, where I finally found my city, my career, my person, and just my general footing in a way that has given me a more solid foundation.  Or maybe I’ve learned to care less about things that don’t matter or that I don’t have control over in the first place.

Take, for instance, my body.  I know that some of you will want to punch me in the throat for this, but hear me out.  I have always been thin.  Like never went through an awkward adolescent larger stage, didn’t have to try to have abs, still have 7th grade girl arms to this day, thin.  My friend Stu always used to tell me that my metabolism would get the better of me around 26.  Then he changed it to 28.  Then he said 30.  Then he said he hated me.

Well, he was about a decade off.  My body has definitely begun to shift and change.  The business of teaching a new grade almost every year for the past few years, which means creating and learning new lesson plans for every single lesson, meant less time for yoga or running.  This, in turn, meant my pants started feeling funny around the waistband, and for the first time I thought about getting rid of clothing because it didn’t fit my stomach.  My abs started merging from six into one.  My hairline started creeping back ever so slowly.  Instead of six chest hairs (each of which had their own individual name), I had twenty-six (or too many to name).  I had to start trimming my nose hairs, but I could finally grow a somewhat respectable beard without being ridiculed.  I got weird rosacea on my face.  The skin on my thighs changed texture to resemble tanned leather.  I stopped being able to sleep through an entire night most of the time.  Before I knew it, I was like a stranger in my own body.

At first, this was disconcerting.  I got frustrated with my body for not responding the way it used to.  It’s not fair to be one way for almost four decades and then up and change, right?  This is where I would’ve broken up and said it’s not me, it’s you.  Or I would have fired it for not meeting expectations.  But you can’t dump or fire your body, you’re stuck with it.  So now what?

In a wild, and probably too-rare, attempt at personal growth, I decided to make friends with my “new” body.  First, we needed to get acquainted, like dating.  I started learning how getting off my phone by 9 p.m. meant a better night’s sleep.  I found a good moisturizing lotion to use daily that helped my skin.  I started using aftershave.  I noticed that my body was regularly communicating with me about what it needed if I would just listen.  And I found a balance between letting go of demanding my body be its 20-year-old self and still working on the parts that I had control over.

My body is just one example of learning to be more at ease in the world around me as I round the corner into my forties.  I’m trying to apply these same lessons to other areas like daily moisturizer, with varying degrees of success.  But I think this is going to be a more forgiving decade, so I’m excited for years where I know who I am, I know my place, and I know my purpose.

Now, if I could just find a way to make peace with that driver’s license photo…

Can The Middle Ages Be Light?

I suppose it’s a natural phenomenon around the annual celebration of your birth to take stock and be contemplative for a moment, especially when it’s one of those years that end in “0” or “5”. I’m not sure why those seem to carry more weight than others, but they just do.

Oddly enough, 25 was much harder for me than 30. I no longer felt legitimately young. I was in the midst of figuring out who I really was. I was changing careers, questioning my faith, distancing myself from my family, and starting over. I felt a bit like the prodigal son wandering in the wilderness trying to find my promised land, but I couldn’t locate a roadmap. It was a painful, but finally honest time. Time to grow up. Time to become a man – even if that man still didn’t have chest hair. Time for 25.

By the time 30 came, life had become much easier. I felt like I had integrity again. My career schizophrenia had settled into a long-term possibility. After trying on many for size, I had finally found what would become my permanent church family. I had turned a corner with my immediate family and started getting closer instead of holding them at arm’s length. I had reached my goal of being 100% debt-free. I was making better choices about who to date, and ending up with life-long friends regardless of the outcome. And I didn’t feel like I was swimming upstream any more, trying so hard to live everyone else’s dreams for my life instead of my own. I began to birth my own dreams and chart a new course toward them. And I had four chest hairs.

So here comes 35 in a few short weeks, and where am I now? I have finally made my way to a city where I can see living long-term. I am building a relationship with a new church family. I have a potentially long-term career with a new company who believes in my future with them. I have an ever-expanding circle of acquaintances and friends whom I adore. I am part of wonderful teams full of colorful personalities. I have a comfortable life.

But what have I really done in the last five years? What difference have I made? How have I invested in others or impacted the world around me in ways big and small? How have I loved so fiercely that it changed someone forever? And what big and bold goals have I set and achieved? Am I too much talk and contemplation, and not enough action? These are the harder questions I’m asking myself currently, the kind you ask when you have 17 chest hairs. And the answers are not very impressive.

As I chew on these questions, I have clarity about a few things. I will take time to set better goals for my life, and keep them as my focus so I don’t meander through the next five years. I will stop making excuses or being shackled by fear because that is not how a confident and healthy man lives. I will care more about what I have done each day to embody love than building a comfortable life I can enjoy. I will make more sacrifices financially (a.k.a. Starbucks every day) so that others may have a better life. I will stop chasing after relationships and focus more on the people that are brought into my life organically. And I will publish these in front of God and all 12 of my readers to hold myself accountable.

So here we go into the middle ages… let us hope they are much more light than dark.