Amplitude - Life at 40

It's technically still Monday, which is when I promised my first post.  It will be the very last time I pre-book a post, as chronic procrastinators without working knowledge of Blogger have no business trying to meet deliverables.  This is for Erin who probably is not not my biggest fan, but is the only one who heard that I'd claimed a piece of blog acreage and didn't let me forget it.

Today I turn 40 and there are no wry observations about wrinkles, time lost or the "new 30" which I believe enough to make my own.  Instead, I note that the very best and the very worst things that have happened in my life occurred during the last ten years.  I also believe that this statement is most likely true were it to be applied retroactively to my 30-, 20- or 10-year old selves.  One always thinks that the last best thing was the absolute best and the latest worst thing the most unbearable.  It is a failure to imagine greater greats and deeper sorrows in the future, for the superlative nature of the present defies change.

Instead of deeming my own observation the evidence of a mind with less hope than hubris, or a life inevitably slanted toward entropy, I find it wondrous proof that my life swings in ever greater arcs as I grow.  And, if it thus follows that my next wound will cut deeper or take more time to heal, so be it.  My next heart-bursting joy will spread like a contagion until I am dizzy from the upswing, looking down at a world of my choosing.