Thinking positively about the F-word

The beautiful Dutch receptionist acknowledged me with a friendly greeting and invited me to sit down in the waiting room. It didn't occur to me to make small talk with her; she was obviously busy and I was a little nervous about the procedure I was about to undergo...the less said about that the better.

Another patient entered - a smartly-dressed ex-pat man who, unlike me, showed himself to be completely unaffected by the receptionist's busy-ness and not the slightest bit nervous about whatever procedure he was about to undergo.  He instigated an astonishing round of trite and inane small talk with her for the next ten minutes.  They eventually settled on the topic of his recent birthday. His thirtieth, evidently. 

They discussed the significance of this milestone at length. She thought it was a good age; it hadn't worried her at all. Quite how she had any idea I'll never know because I am convinced she had at least a decade to go before she would be qualified to comment.  "Apparently", she mused, "they say that thirty is the new twenty".  Silently, I wondered who "they" were. I also wondered who on earth would want to be twenty again.

He, on the other hand was not convinced. The poor man felt positively ancient. THIRTY! Huh, he couldn't quite get his head around it, he confessed. 

"No", the  tall, svelte, blonde, caramel-voiced, silky-skinned, perky-breasted, immaculately groomed, dentally perfect, linguistically gifted, drop-dead gorgeous, baby-faced receptionist insisted. "Thirty is not old. After all, it's not like you're FIFTY or something". She spat the number out as if she was cursing. 

"Right", the young buck agreed. "Fifty is just .... pfff ... like REALLY old".

Fifty. Five O. Far out. 

Fifty. The new F-word.

I confess that I am a woman who has been enjoying her forties for let's say, quite a few years now.  Lately, I have become intrigued and a little excited by the Dutch tradition of making an enormous deal of fiftieth birthday celebrations, whereby in a weird cultural twist I will, in the next year or so, be compared with the wise and virtuous biblical figure of Sarah - although hopefully without the added complication of an unexpected late life pregnancy. 

So perhaps I gasped audibly at that point in the waiting room conversation, I'm not sure. I remember that part of me wanted to continue listening in case they came up with any other laughable pronouncements. Another part wanted to look over the top of my glasses while imparting one of my "wisdom of the elders" talks that De Jongens find in turns amusing, tedious, infuriating and "boooorrrrrr-ing".

I could have told Mr and Ms Thirty for example that there is a Dutch proverb that translates to English as "We grow old too soon and smart too late ". I would have liked to have tossed that across the waiting room, in a dignified and mature manner of course; a single timely comment from the sage in the corner. I could have patronisingly asked them what they thought the proverb meant, then followed that up with my observation that they in fact personified it. Yes indeed, that would have shown them. 

However, Magazina, the waiting room goddess mercifully smiled on me at that point; my name was called and I was spared any further agony, at least of the conversational kind.

I went over the interaction in my mind.  Initially, I tried to take comfort in the fact that I must look much younger than my actual 30 and 227 twelfths years. Certainly I must not even look close to fifty. Or even forty eight.  Otherwise they wouldn't have had that conversation in front of me, right? Two metres from where I sat.

But alas, in the end I spent the entire day desperately trying to compose a list of reasons why it is in fact good to be on the downhill run to the F-word.

I decided to come up with one point for each decade of my life thus far.

• Top of my list is that I no longer feel I need to make small talk with people, particularly in waiting rooms.  I realise, in my wise middle age, that filling awkward silences can sometimes make things more awkward than leaving the silence to speak for itself. Speak less and say more. I know at least two thirty year olds who would do well to remember that.
• Secondly, I am resilient.  Or at least I thought I was until I overheard two thirty year olds discussing the F-word in front of me. I'm currently telling myself that I'm resilient enough to bounce back from this latest knock to my self-image . . . now telling myself again . . . and again.
• Third, I no longer feel the need to articulate my views in every situation and convince other people of their obvious errors of judgement and flawed rationale.  Admittedly, it would have been good if I'd reached that point a few decades ago . . . certainly my waiting room companions should be grateful that I have mellowed to the point where I chose not to respond to their ageist generalisations.
• Fourth, I feel that I now have a more rounded perspective on life - my accumulated life experience enables me to fit together a kind of "big picture", albeit out of focus in parts.  As a result, I now know that the issues that cause a 30 year old enormous angst  (like turning fifty for example) are but single pieces in the 50,000 piece jigsaw puzzle of life. The waiting room duo's expressed fear of the F-word will probably taunt them for the next two decades and possibly prevent them from really enjoying their thirties or their forties. Serves them right.
• Fifth, I don't need a fifth point.  My journey towards the F-word has allowed me to let go of my exhausting, and ultimately unsuccessful youthful pursuit of perfectionism.  So now, when I set myself a random goal of say, coming up with five witty and pithy points in a blog, and I fail to get beyond four, it simply doesn't worry me. Well, not as much as it would have when I was thirty anyway.

So, I've concluded that more use needs to be made of the F-word.  It's a word that brings wisdom, perspective, serenity and grace.  It's a word that clearly demonstrates that there's an element of truth in most proverbs. Especially Dutch proverbs.

And importantly, it's a word that reminds me to wear noise-cancelling headphones to my next appointment.