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Good Morning, I was half way through an exercise class, trying to do a sit-up on a foam roller, when my friend said very loudly: ‘I bet our parents weren’t doing this at our age. They’d be at home having a second G and T. The only stretching they did was leaning forward to change the channel to Poldark before lighting up a fag. Which, in part, might explain why we are living longer than previous generations and why we keep seeing headlines that tell us that 40 is the new 30, 90 the new 70 and, most recently, 50 the new 20. This last off the back of a survey done for High 50 Magazine claims that 40% of the over 50’s are having sex twice a week and a ‘sizeable minority’ are taking recreational drugs. Having just turned 50 I’m excited by these recalibrations of my age. But no amount of spin can change the fact that, if 30 felt like the end of youth and 40 passed with barely a nod, 50 feels like a proper, grown-up age. And whatever magazines might be telling me, the body I’m waking up with the day after five a side football is saying ‘You’re 50. Get used to it.’ So why not get used to it? Maybe it’s partly because our culture sees so little merit in getting older. This constant re-branding of each decade is as much about disguising age as about celebrating it. We’re dressing it up in youth’s apparel because we believe young is better than old. Old must be delayed. Avoided. Renamed. I don’t expect to live long enough to see the headline ‘20 is the new 50!’ but there are things I know now that I’d liked to have known then. Being older has its advantages. And in another culture and age, it didn’t have to mimic youth to claim validity. In the Old Testament experience was valued so highly that 50 years olds were allowed to retire from certain physical duties so that the community could make the most of their accumulated wisdom. As a boy, my elders were often telling me to be thankful, but I’ve almost had to get to their age to appreciate what they wanted me to thankful for. At recent parties celebrating the landmarks of 50 and 60, there has been a real sense of gratitude: for making it this far, for friendships, for family, for life. And maybe that gratitude is a kind of understanding. It’s why the Psalmist asks ‘teach us to number our days so that we might gain a heart of wisdom.’ Scripture says life might last 70 years, 80 if we have the strength, but it doesn’t pretend this span won’t have troubles or sorrows. It seems we have a choice between living out whatever days we have by raging at our aging and pretending that it isn’t really happening; or being glad for what we have and celebrating it as we can – with gratitude, and as much dancing as our bodies can take.