Life Is Terrifying

I'm 41, married with three kids. I own a house and a business and by other people's standards I'm pretty successful (by my own I see a lot of room for improvement). On the inside I feel 18. My body is starting to figure out it's over 40. I do think I'm just pretending to be an adult. I often feel like I don't know what I'm doing, but I've started to notice that a lot of 20 year olds seem like children to me and they clearly have less of a clue about how to survive than I do. The aphorism "Old age and treachery will always overcome youth and beauty" is, apparently, true. So I know I'll manage, if only because I've been doing it long enough to have some ideas about how to do it with some skill. Now get off my lawn.

I'm older than the parents in that comic strip. What I have noticed, although it is not an absolute, is that having children is when "real" maturity starts for most people. Caring for plants or pets or even employees is nowhere near the kick in the butt that raising a child is. The parents in that comic strip would have been just as clueless at 26 as their child is, they just HAD to grow up starting that year in a way he hasn't had to yet.

Nearly 50 here and Nah. You always feel like you're faking it. Unless you're so incompetent you actually believe you have it nailed and can't see what a sorry job you're making of life.

Rather like exams when you're a kid - the clever kids come out saying, 'Oh god that was really tough, how did you answer number 4, I'm sure I screwed it up'. The stupid kids come out saying, 'that was a breeze'.

Marsh Gibbon