Letter I Wrote To Myself When I Turned 40

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If I could talk to myself, I probably say these stuff. Wondering if someone else can relate: Dear self who just turned 40, First of all congratulations for finally realizing the importance of not being an a detestable person. It pays to be tough, cranky and intimidating but being a nice person will get you some good company. Just make sure to be ready to pull out that monster inside of you incase some dick really deserves it. So you just turned forty this day? Good for you because to exist for four decades is an accomplishment itself. We are dying since the day we were born and I honestly believed we won't make it to 25. Hell, with the way we were raised and the kind of life we were born into, my deadline for us was the day after we turned 18. No, I was even thinking when we hit puberty, people will be starting to read our eulogy. So be thankful to God because we lasted four decades. Let's not give the big guy a reason to shut our life switch off for the next few years. I know you feel a bit drag when the first digit of your age now turned to number 4. Nothing is more depressing than that. We feel elated when we turned 21 or 30 because we felt we're men. Real men. Only to realize we turning into creaking old version of our selves. But don't worry. Things will get better as we age. It's sure bad by now but I have a bigger hope that life will be more challenging and nicer. Remember these things now that you're forty: Don't believe in the cliche that, "Life begins at forty!" . Either people who tell you that are lying or they just resigned to the fact that growing is not a cool thing so you make excuses to counter the reality that we can't outrun or duke father time. Accept that turning forty sucks. And move on. The earlier you accept that, the easier to move on. Be kind to your back and knees. You will miss them soon. Remember that they are not that strong anymore. So stop pretending that you can still dunk and block shots like Charles Barkley. Your almost like him 20 years ago. Not anymore. So grab every opportunity to be bench warmer during games. It's more fun yelling at people from the sidelines. Eat well, get good sleep and avoid too much sun. Be faithful to you wife or girlfriend or whatever. Remember the time you cheated on your girlfriend 18 years ago? It cost you 500 bucks for a ladies bag and an extra 100 for flowers just to please her and accept you back. You can always tell this to your son who will soon be approaching puberty, " it will cost you nothing if you are faithful." By this time you are either a boss, making good money or own something like a car or a house. If you have these three I mentioned you are indeed blessed. But in this imperfect word, maybe you only got one or two of the choices I mentioned but it's still ok. Atleast the pressure to achieve something is reduced to one instead of three. So tell your kids that before they turned forty, try to achieve atleast one. And remember those wasted opportunities when you were young because you told yourself you are not ready? Well I hope its clear to you now that when you wait till you are ready, you will end up waiting. So take risk. Don't get caught up with nonsense of getting a tattoo or dying you hair red. When you're young, its easy to blame all this nonsense on teenage angst. You are forty. You screw up your skin or hair? Shame on you. So happy birthday again. I assure you things will get better. But if ain't, you had four decades of knowledge and wisdom to pull from to soldier on. Don't forget to say thank you to all who was with you during the ride.