Shower Thoughts

A few days ago, I had the unfortunate experience of being stuck in an elevator at my job for an hour. On the 13th Floor. On a Friday afternoon.

While this highly irritating, slightly traumatizing ordeal was taking place, I decided to do what most writers do. I took this unexpected prompt, opened my notes app, and started writing.

This experience was a good metaphor for life moments that happen to many people around 40. Moments when we get stopped, moments where we find ourselves stuck.

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At this stage of your life, do you still dream? What are your dreams about? What are your dreams no longer about? Who are your dreams for?

40 is a great time to ask: What have your dreams cost you? What has cost you your dreams?

Athletes have an offseason, many actors and entertainers have an offseason. Politicians get an offseason. And there are all sorts of occupations and lifestyles that have cycles that at least include slow periods where people can take short breaks.

I wish more adults could experience an offseason, especially those of us about to enter mid-life. I believe that we all need time to sleep, time to rest, time to reflect, time to reset. We need time to dream.

We need an offseason.

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One of the social media trends I've come to appreciate has been people making TikToks of themselves using the face aging filter. In the majority of the ones that appear in my feed, people genearlly respond lovingly, gently, and knowingly at the visuals of their future faces.

I think this trend, that made it socially acceptable to publicly share images of a version of yourself with more wrinkles, less hair, and no youthful glow, has been a much-needed counterbalance to the body slimming underclothes, weight loss supplements, plastic surgery procedures, hair dyeing kits, and the billion-dollar industries that feed on the insecurities and realities of many of us soon-to-be middle agers.

We all have multiple aspects of our lives that function as windows that others to see us at this stage in our lives, and as mirrors that allow us to see ourselves. So I wanted to invite us to think about the mirrors and windows of our lives, and how they impact how we think about turning 40.

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Have you ever experienced the stages of shock, denial, anger, and grief after discovering that someone who you respected and admired was not who you thought they were?

At this stage of our lives, a year has not gone by without us witnessing some once-beloved and respected entertainer, politician, local community leader, or religious figure get caught up in a reputation-tainting scandal.

And as we continue to occupy more positions of influence and authority on-and-offline throughout our 40s, in our families, in our commmunities, and in our society, we have the opportunity - and responsibility - to impact how our culture handles those who slip, trip, stumble, or tumble from a position of status.

So we're going to need to be as honest with ourselves as we expect those who have let us down to be with us.

Did an experience of being let down by someone you looked up as child affect how you react today to hearing about a public figure's fall from grace?

Has an experience of being the person who has disappointed others as a result of life choices you made changed how you respond to news about a famous person's shortcomings and setbacks?

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One of the gifts of turning 40 is the self-awareness to know when to keep your two cents to yourself and sit out a fight, whether over the internet or in your house.

But life comes at us fast, and it seems like every few weeks another Really Big Deal Event happen, and many of us answer the battle cry of our group and take to our phones, our TVs, and our streets to stand up and speak out.

One of my core unifying principles of everything is that much of human behavior, especially between groups of people, is that much of life functions like the cafeteria of a large public high school. Where you sit, who knows you exist, whose side you take when conflict arises...these same questions are as important the dining tables, boardroom tables, and political roundtables of our adult lives as they were to the lunchroom tables of our childhoods.

This episode is a check-in meditation for a generation of 40 year olds who have already lived through a lifetime worth of interpersonal conflicts, social movements, online fights, and existential crises. We have been seen a lot, said a lot, and done a lot. We've been in a lot of fights, about a lot of topics, with a lot of people.

How's going for you at this point in your life? How's it going for the 40-year olds around you? How have the technological and societal shifts in the speed and scope of the stands we've had to take and the fights we've had to engage impacted us?

How many of us are carrying unhealed mental scars from last month's tragedy into this month's tragedy?

How many of us are living in the rubble of crumbled relationships, in the aftermath of the arguments and battles from last year's outrage?

What have you learned from all the online and offline fights that you've seen and experienced?



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Ignorance can be bliss, the time between when something went wrong and when you found out something went wrong. But what happens your bliss is rudely interrupted by reality and you discover that things are not going to be okay unless you get help.

At this point in my life, I realize that there are two kinds of 40-year olds: those who have experienced at least one humbling moment where they weren't as smart as they thought they were, or that things around them weren't as certain as they thought...and people who have never had such an experience.

One advantage of experiencing a humbling moment, is the knowledge of what it feels like - as an adult - to need help.

It's one thing to need help. It's another thing to want help. But to ask to for help? For many of us, asking for help is an entirely different matter.

Are you someone is comfortable asking for help? In what settings and circumstances do you find it harder to ask for assistance?

How good are you at accepting help? Do you ever feel obligated to return the favor as soon as possible? Do you try to "pay it forward?"

What level of gratitude do you expect when you are the one who provided help to a stranger who asked you for assistance?


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By 40, many of us have experienced being on multiple sides of expectation-acceptance dance.
Many of us had childhoods that were defined by the expectations of others. We saw how their acceptance and approval of us was often determined - or withheld - by how much we met their expectations, or how much we resisted and went against them.

And this social reward/punishment system continued into multiple aspects our adult lives, whether we are known by a few hundred people, or by a few million.

Those of us who are fans of sports believe in the power of athletic competition, and the personalities and performances of athletes to tell a story of who we are, individually and collectively. So as U.S. 2023 World Championship Gold Medal sprinter Sha'Carri Richardson reclaimed the attention and applause of the world this month, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on what we've learned at this stage in our lives from the times we've been the one placed on a pedastal, knocked off the pedastal, and fighting for the chance to get back on top of the pedastal once again.

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Taking an episode to celebrate the impact of the semi-strangers in our lives. They are not the super famous figures who had an impact on our lives. They are also not the super foundational people who have close, personal connections to us and to our life story.

They are the people in the middle. We may not have known them well, but they made an impact on us, they played a role in our lives, and their legacy matters.

Who are the semi-strangers in your life? How do you celebrate the impact they have had on your life and preserve their memory?

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When you're young, ignorance is bliss. By 40, more often than not, ignorance is just expensive. And what's even more expensive than ignorance? Procrastination.

Those things that we know we should not put off, delay, and ignore but we do anyway. Whether because of fear or fatigue, denial or distractions, being overwhelmed and/or underpaid, most of us have some area of our lives where we have been warned and informed that there's something we need to address and we have yet to do anything about it.

Sometimes, we have less time than we think, the future comes faster than we expected, and we're left stuck with the consequences of our choice to put off to tomorrow what should have been handled today.

Each day is a opportunity to create new possibilities for our future selves, to reignite relationships and realities that have become stagnant...to get unstuck.

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When was the first time you knew you were adult? When you moved out on your own? When you took over paying the bills for older/younger loved ones? When you accepted responsibility and accountability for your actions?

One of the things we all come to realize is that there are levels to adulting. One key level of adult life is being able to identify and prioritize the essential components of our lives. The relationships, habits, beliefs, and possessions that allow us to survive and navigate our days.

What are the parts of your life that cannot break?

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