The day I turned 40 was quite carefully planned. I mean, not so carefully, but I decided it should be something special, I mean to be on an exotic island or at least somewhere in a city break, but definitively more than just a dinner out, since my day was in the middle of the week.
After a while, plans changed and I found myself in a situation where I was supposed to celebrate my birthday with colleagues, in a entrepreneurial education environment, such as a 5 days camp in the mountains with other entrepreneurs. I said, ok, I’m in, that’s definitively something else!
In the end, the day turned out to be… something I would rather forget, not about the age, but the context that I was in was so unforeseen and undesired that I really took the decision to forget that day and celebrate my day whenever the context will change and allow it. So far, I’m still waiting, because we have corona days..
Why am I saying this? Because, if there is a big lesson that I found out these last years, is that, if you want to do something and you get the chance to do it, DO IT, stop thinking so much at what other people thing or how this will impact them because chances come and go but, at some point, they might not come anymore and you will regret it. I know, it sounds as in the books, but I really lived it and it’s the toughest lesson I got these years: LIVE THE MOMENT.
Turning back to my 40, well… I don’t feel them, mostly I feel the social pressure that one should not be doing this and that when 40, but I try to ignore it and keep my childhood along in my soul. So, if I wear to give some piece of advice to my 20 years old me, I would tell me:
- Stop thinking so much about what other people feel or say, there should be a limit to that;
- Don’t choose to wait if an opportunity to do something you like is coming, usually you regret;
- Don’t stop playing and definitively don’t stop being a kid, because society takes good care of keeping you as a grown up;
- Take care of your people, yes, true friends are those ones that you don’t need to call every day, but, in fact, you should call them and see them more often so that friendship continues;
- Family comes first;
- You don’t have nothing if you and the loved ones are not healthy or suffering; that’s not just a saying, I’ve lived it, you cannot really enjoy anything if a person you love is in pain;
- Cherish every day and don’t take anything for granted; I did, and now I just lung for a walk in the park or a seaside trip in the wildness.
I know I sound my age, but I really think I got wiser in these last years (not by choice, but by context) and maybe that’s a good thing or maybe not. But I am fighting actively to keep my inner child happy and keep my optimism at high rates and sometimes I really miss the craziness that I had in me to live life at the fullest. Then again, give me a cranberry vodka and there are good chances I forget all about my wisdom and be crazy and wild and playful again, if not at least for some hours.
