The Fortuitous Fall and Rise of a 40 Year Old

I sat alone — the door closed, the kids asleep, the darkness lit by a dim, incandescent light — and I read the words “Happy Birthday, 40 years young.” There was a knot in my stomach, a hole in my core, and the tears could no longer be restrained. As I opened my present, a brisk wind of emotions swirled through my mind: How did I get here so quickly? What honor, what happiness have my dreams (now past) brought me? I contemplated the present turmoils and timidly refrained my thoughts from the uncertain imbroglio that shrouded the future.

Reflecting on 40 Years

Forty years young, but there was nothing young about how my body felt. My knee ached from on old ski injury more than a decade ago. My run time had doubled, and my scale was surely broken, for the numbers staring back at me were outrageous. I poked my sides, prodded my neck, and pinched the skin under my arms. I looked at my reflection in the mirror and slowly reached for the masking tape; my aunt had once suggested sticking masking tape on my forehead before bed to prevent the wrinkles from forming in my sleep. How I laughed hysterically at her suggestion . . . now my husband was laughing at me.

Forty years old. I once counted the years in certifications, academic credentials, jobs, and places I lived. Now the years were marked by the birth of my kids and their developmental milestones. I recorded the first time my daughter Aleena talked, walked, started preschool and kindergarten, and then I started again with my son Casim. My life was now my kids, and I faded somewhere in the background blending with the wallpaper of life . . . I was slowly fading away.

Forty years old. I once dreamed of a part-time consulting profession where I perfectly balanced my career and my family life, living in a ranch home we would build, a wall of glass windows looking out on paint horses and black cattle grazing on green pastures. Instead of looking towards the future of endless possibilities, I was reminiscing on past failures and present disenchantments. The ebullience of youth, the rebellious blood, the physical vitality, the reckless determination had long subsided. I ruefully looked back at the folly of my decisions, unpersuaded by wiser counsel, and looked ahead at a life paying the consequences. Stricken with the grief of my grandparents’ demise, I was morbidly aware that the time of deterioration and decay was fast approaching.

40 Years Young

This mood of impending doom I went to sleep with, I woke up with, and took with me to the “ijtema” — a women’s gathering held that very weekend. Mothers and grandmothers, children and babies sat quietly during ijtema as a girl of 17 told of the fate of another 40 year old.

Forty years young, the holy prophet Muhammed (peace and blessings be on him) received his first revelation of the Holy Quran on the mount Hira where he frequently went to meditate. He ran home to his wife Khadijah, shaking and anxious; he was going mad, he thought. Khadija comforted him and took him to see her cousin Waraka, a Christian of known piety, who assured him of his task. At the age of 40, he was now destined to bring the religion of Islam to humanity.

I knew this story since childhood, but now I looked upon it with a new realization. It was in his life that I found the answer. Forty years young. When many were experiencing a mid-life crisis and trying to steal the years gone by, I just then realized that this was the beginning. Forty was the turning point; it was the age of maturity. It was time to break the bondage of the tangible and climb the infinite ladder to the ethereal. It forced me to look into the future and to will the tide of change to a brighter, favorable outcome.

A New Goal

My goal for a brighter future was no longer the dream house; it was no longer the academic credentials; it was no longer my physical desirability; it was no longer the things of this world but the intangible verities of the next. The search for happiness, the search for joy, the search for peace within myself now consumed me. The peace that calms the soul, the solution to the misery of the disturbed mind, the remedy for the body and the afflictions of the heart, I became acutely aware, was to be found in the connection between creator and creation.

A new flame was lit in my heart, a restless uneasiness, a desire for something more than myself, to search the path to which I was impelled. I thus became resolute to find the smiles in the midst of sadness, to find the happiness in the midst of sorrow, to find the love in the midst of hate, to find the ethereal thread that binds us all in humanity.