It’s been over a month since my last post. Many thoughts crossed my mind throughout the past period, but I couldn’t bring myself to writing. There was too much noise in my head that I couldn’t hear my thoughts properly.
One of these thoughts was about this whole issue of women turning 40!
The minute you hit the BIG FOUR ZERO, people start looking at you with a totally different perspective.
At 39, you were still young; you still had hope for a great life. But the minute the clock turns 12 the eve of your 40th birthday, you are doomed! You’ll be expected to make compromises. If you were still single, people expect you to give up on your dream to find prince charming. They’d think you’re mad if you ever dreamt of ever feeling the sparks of love. The best part is that they believe that no one your age would even look at you. This whole preconditioned thinking and judgment can be very painful.
But in our part of the world, we were raised to think like that. In some countries you’d lose hope at the age of 25. I’m not only talking about love, marriage and having children. I’m also talking about your whole lifestyle; the way you dress, the way you carry yourself. You’re suddenly expected to calm down.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve gone through a long mental process to make peace with the fact that things didn’t go the way I had planned them ever since I was a teenager.
But despite all the agony I’ve gone through last year, turning 40 was the biggest blessing. It was the age when I made peace with everything I didn’t have and with everything I didn’t do in my 20’s or 30’s.
Last year, I read a great book by Elif Shafak called the 40 Rules of Love. It’s about Ella, a 40-year-old unhappy housewife who takes a job as a reader for a literary agent.
Her first assignment is to read and report on ‘Sweet Blasphemy’, a story about a whirling Sufi Dervish named Shams of Tabriz and his search for Rumi. Inspired by the story, Ella decides to send an email to the author and in one of her e-mails she shares her fears about turning 40. He sends a lovely email back about the beauty of 40:
“In mystic thought forty symbolizes the ascent from one level to a higher one and spiritual awakening
When we mourn we mourn for forty days
When a baby is born it takes forty days for him to get ready to start life on earth
When we are in love we need to wait for forty days to be sure of our feelings
The flood of Noah lasted forty days and while the waters destroyed life, they also washed all impurity away and enabled human beings to make a new, fresh start.
In Islamic mysticism there are forty degrees between man and God. Likewise there are four basic stages of consciousness and ten degrees in each, making forty levels in total
Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days and nights.
Muhammad was forty years old when he received the call to become a prophet.
Buddha meditated under a linden tree for forty days
You receive a new mission at forty, a new lease in life! You have reached a most auspicious number. There are no wrinkles or gray hair strong enough to defy the power of 40.”
Indeed we do receive a new lease in life! But it’s up to us to decide how we should use it. We can either go on dreaming of love sparks and see our 40 as a new beginning, or we can sit back, feel sorry for ourselves and see it as the beginning of the end.
