Mid-life turning point, shall we embrace it or race away?

Diaz   |  Sun, 07/05/2009 11:29 AM  |  Lifestyle

Every week when I submit my column to the editor, I always number each article. Last week that number reached 52 (weeks), or a year that I've been contributing my thoughts through this column to entertain or to annoy the hell out of you every Sunday.

Perhaps a year is considerably short to some of you, but not for me who wasn't born a writer. When I was offered the job to write about style (as lifestyle) for the Sunday Post a year ago, I had no idea what I was going to compose. I never doubted my artistic sense in design, illustration, art direction, or strutting my stuff at fashion events, but writing? Apart from getting B+ for Bahasa Indonesia writing lessons during secondary school, I hardly had any professional experience at all.

I have learned a lot from the past year in this new field, while transforming my "sporty' verbal skills into the written word. I have experienced major changes in my life and my mind-set as well. I finally shifted to the "next chapter" of my life by entering the mid-thirties group. Maybe you can call it maturing; some people even consider it a "mid-life crisis". In the spinning world of vanity that we are in, shall we let age slip away and interfere with our ego?

During my twenties, I never thought I would ever grow up. I thought I would still be the vogue-ing bitch occupying myself with parties, collecting must-have items from the season and prioritizing my idealism on top of everything else. My friends and I even joked back then that we would still be wearing hipster pants in the retirement home.

Unfortunately, transformation happens in a different time-frame for everyone and friends too, come and go. Those who used to be in your "circle-1" are now shifted to "circle-3" because you don't find similarities in your dancing schedule anymore. Those in circle-5 are now moved to circle-2 because you found a common ground in exchanging tips for growing peonies in your garden. Fashion it seems, applies to your friends too; one day they'll be in and the next day they'll be out.

One of the most obvious mid-life changes is that we don't party as hard as we used to, we manage not to sweat over little things that bug us anymore, we become more concerned about our well-being, more careful towards about we think and say and we hang our fitted pants and glittery tank tops in exchange for comfortable jeans and delicate shirts. Finally we have moved from the cage of wild horses into the bay of married pigs.

My friend called me boring because I don't party hard-core with him anymore and do not update him with my spicy or tragic weekend booty-call stories.

My "single and fabulous (?)" colleagues labeled me a doomed housewife as I no longer hang out with them after work in shopping malls or expensive bars.

Has my "happening" life really ended just because I'm looking forward to going home after daily activities to cook my own meals and crash-out with new a DVD rather than juggle Jakarta's sickening traffic jams? Have I become one of those "settling down ex-party goers" I used to be cynical about? Am I dead???

Thinking about our growth in new directions can create so many questions in our 30-something-year-old heads. As I'm trying to understand my own demons, I realize it's the culture or simply urban lifestyle that prevents us from growing.

Despite living la vida loca in fabulousity, many cosmopolitans are restrained by their family as they still live under one roof for as long as they live.

Others have moved out and are living independently, but they still haven't found the peace they're looking for, or simply can't stand facing their four sided kost-kostan (boarding room) walls, causing them to escape their reality, indulge in luxury and chase "never-ending happenings" to make-up for the emptiness created by their own freedom and restriction.

Change will eventually happen whether we expect it or not. And it's totally our call if we want to accept it or escape it. Sometimes we fear what we will become, but the least we can do is re-invent ourselves as our time goes by.

One breezy Sunday, I was having breakfast with my boyfriend in a caf* along Seminyak beach, Bali. I saw a 40-something-year-old woman with a cigarette hanging from her mouth and a can of beer in her hand. The bags under her eyes nearly dropped to the ground, her hair was tousled like a bird nest and the texture of her skin resembled a 100-year-old turtle. As she passed me, I sensed the familiar smell of ashtray pouring down my muesli. Surely she had surely just jumped out of the Double Six club at 9. a.m. or perhaps a corpse of a party animal had managed to escape the grave. I knew then that I was not dead, I was just moving into the age of gracefulness.

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