Life is not about what I thought it was about.

My nieces are teenagers. Sometimes I want to yell down the phone at them “You think you’ve got probelms now!” But I never do. Being a teenager is hard. What I never realised when I was a teenager is that actually, life is generally hard. There are good times, and they matter, even more than the bad times. But life is hard. No one talks about midlife. Oh yeah, the whole “midlife crisis” thing is well known and often giggled at, but life after 45 is odd. Or maybe life after both parents are dead, is odd. I know I could be next. I don’t believe that death is the end, but this world, this world is so beautiful I want to stay here forever to see how the story ends. And that’s when life gets hard: after a certain point we know that we have fewer days ahead than behind. That everything is ephemeral here, even the beautiful and simple things. The things like career, “success” (wtf?), these are easily seen as illusions (although we all need a crust to eat, so, you know, money is necessary), but what of love, kindness and generosity. What are these things? What is life? As I get older, I have more and more questions.