Life after 40

This post is coming from a café in HCMC. There is more than usual free time on hand and that makes the mind wander. The latest wandering has been on a few realisations that come after one turns 40. These are just a few and in a particular order.

1.      Hydration is most important – when I don’t hydrate well, my head feels heavy and I feel tired faster. Nothing new here, because it holds true for everybody. As one paces through decades, this just becomes so much more important that anything else that holds your body together. I now carry water everywhere I go and make sure that I drink 2 litres of water everyday. The day starts with a litre of water as soon as I wake up. It is comforting to know that 50% of the daily demand is met in the first hour of the morning. The consequences of under-hydration show up much more now than they used to before the age of 40.

Movement comes a close second – from the day you are born, your are communicating with your body. The language of communication with your body is – what you feed it (food) and how you move it (movement). When you feed your body the right food and you move enough you are telling your body that you care for it. And it responds by functioning well because it has no autonomy, it takes your signals as how you want to live life.

 

The less careful you are about what you eat and how much you move, the more your body will retreat into degeneration.

 

In the first 2 decades, your parents make sure that you are fed well and right and you move enough. So thank your parents for forcing the greens, the milk and letting you play as much as you wanted to. The 3^rd decade of your life is when your body sees the shift to everything – alcohol makes it’s entry, new cuisines, lack of exercise all make the body think that’s how you want it to be – degenerative. So it does as it is told.

 

3.      Don’t rush into anything – for many days in a month, I wake up before the sun rises and go out for a walk or a run. Even on a working day. It creates time which you give to everything that deserves it. From the morning drink, to the shower, to the ironing of the shirt. When you rush into nothing, everything  comes to you at the right pace.

 

4.      Good doesn’t need to be expensive - I recently purchased a running shoe for $25. This price is almost 1/10^th of the price I paid 3 years ago for a running shoe and the price that many people who run pay. Both shoes perform exactly the same on a per kilometre basis. The shoe I bought 3 years ago was On Cloudrunner and the shoe I bought recently is the Decathlon Jogflow 190.1

 

For the first 3 decades in my life I paid through my nose to acquire the best of everything that I could afford. Sometimes even going beyond my means to buy things. My first smartphone (a very flashy Nokia 6270) was purchased in the first month of my first job and it cost me more than my monthly salary. It was important to be seen with that in my hand. It lasted an year before I bought the next one (the Nokia N95). It was a wonderful feeling to be known as the phone aficionado among friends though I did really enjoy being obsessed with smartphones and gadgets.

That’s what marketing has done to the tuning in our brains. We cannot get ourselves to believe that anything good can be purchased without paying a high price. For a moment, let’s assume there is no such thing as feeling special and unique possessing something. Marketing has sucked our money and there’s no way we can get it back. Except by realising that good doesn’t need to be expensive.

The phone I have now, has cracks all over the screen but works well. I’ve had it with me for ~4 years and have no plans to replace it until it packs up and refuses to accept CPR.

 

5.      The road to hell is paved with good intentions – nowhere is this more ture than in work life. No matter how good a person you are, the respect you get is tied directly to the title you hold. The day the title goes away, so does most of the respect. I say most because there will still be a handful of people who will recognise you for what you are separately from the title you held. Those people are rare.

 

I am very sure that my list will expand as life throws many more curveballs. Until the next edition of life after 40, this will be it. It’s now almost lunch time on a hot day in HCMC, there’s a river flowing right next to where I am sitting and it is a good idea to find a spot next to the river and read a book.