Reaching 40: Time, Place & Acceptance

As I pass a milestone birthday, I ponder the last 40 years. I'm faced with some hard questions, but overall, an acceptance that we journey forward, celebrating being here, in this place, at this time.

As we approach, and then pass, ‘milestone’ birthdays, I think it’s more than a little natural to look back and to ponder. I think that in my 40 years, a milepost I passed in December 2023, I’ve spent a lot of time looking back and pondering. Perhaps as the years pass, these ponderings become more acute, deep, and maybe even wistful. Anyone who’s been following my Substack journey will have read some of these, so I make no apology for this slightly deeper, and indeed, lengthier post.

‘Wisdom comes with age’

So says the proverb. When I was fairly newly-born, my grandparents were heard to have remarked that I was “wise beyond my years”. In retrospect, doesn’t that sound frightfully dull? Imagine being an old ‘fuddy duddy’ before your 5th birthday?! Actually, looking back, I think I have been blessed with a certain degree of wisdom in my life. It was remarked upon fairly recently that I’m the person in a meeting who will, eventually, say out loud what everyone else is thinking but not prepared to say. It’s true. Not in a nasty way, but because I think I have been blessed with the ability to stand back and see the bigger picture, observing quietly from the sidelines.

With Nanny at Roath Park, Cardiff, sporting my much-missed Wombles t-shirt (I still have it, but it no longer fits) and my long-gone golden curls.

If I spent the first 25 years of my life waiting in the wings, I think I’ve spent the last 15 poking my head a little further around the edge. At school, my drama report was always the same: