Someone once said, that ‘middle age is when a narrow waist and a broad mind begin to change places.’ Others define it as the period between age 40 and well – death. In the United States as well as in other countries, middle age is often defined as the period of life between 40 to 60 years of age. While Sociologists define it as a combination of your age, your psychological state and how you feel about certain things. 

Believe it or not, many people dread the thought of middle age. Some even utter it as if it is a dirty word when it comes up in polite conversation; spitting it out as if it were liver or some other ‘acquired-taste’ food. Blame it on modern medicine where a Botox injection has become the nation’s eradicator of laugh lines and crow’s feet, real or imagined, and is as routine today as sipping a large, Starbucks nonfat, decaffeinated, mocha latte with cinnamon sprinkled on top. 

Blame it on franchises like CURVES that have sprung up in strip malls next door to KFCs (Kentucky Fried Chicken) across the nation where women with well --- curves ‘cardio’ themselves thin. Blame it on possessing a great sense of humor; or the zest for healthy living:  the simple fact of the matter is that people are living younger… longer.

My own stance on middle age is that it is a new beginning, and not an ending of life, as I know it. You see, I don't think of myself as being middle-aged. At fifty-six, I feel friskier than I ever did when I was in my thirties. Recently, one of the ‘thirty-somethings’ whom I mentor asked me how old I was.  She was visibly astounded when I told her my age. “You hardly have any gray hair. And you don’t any wrinkles at all,” she exclaimed. I tell her that I am well preserved in Scotch (whiskey) but must give ‘props’ (credit) to good genes and to Noxzema, (a medicated skin cream) that I’ve washed my face with since I was a girl. However, there is that one chin hair that comes back even after plucking with industrial strength tweezers. And there have been days that the sound of my knees creaking has drowned out the sound of my thighs rubbing together when I walk. Admittedly I could go and on about the trials and tribulations of getting older.

Still, I am immensely proud of the fact that I don't look or “act my age" - whatever looking and acting a certain age means. If 50 is the new 40 as the pundits are proclaiming, then I could be their next poster child for the middle aged.  I no longer worry about what others think, about how I look or how I act. And I want to try everything: climb the highest mountain; maybe bungee-jump from a plane. For I feel like there is nothing that I can’t accomplish. Indeed, I love the person I've finally become and I’m getting better every day.