THE FLIP FLOP LIFE

Ooooops! I forgot to publish the english translation of my post about turning fifty. But here it goes with my apoligies!

This week I definitely leave the decade of the forties to become ta-ta-taaaaaaa: fifty-years-old.

There it is. Fifty years. Fifty. Five and zero. Five decades. Ten lustrums (my father would say).

The strange thing is that I don’t have the feeling of being so old at all ;-). In fact, I feel better now than I did ten years ago, in large part because of this sabbatical year, which is doing me well. I think the GPs should officially establish a sabbatical year to all. I imagine the scene:

“Oops ma’am, I see here in your file that you will soon turn fifty. I am going to prescribe a year to go to the end of the world, so that you do not get too stuffy, I already see some silver hairs and it says here on the computer that you have suffered lower back pain three times in the last year. And let’s not talk about the difficulty of reading the ingredients on the supermarket cans and the one hundred thousand close-up glasses that you have all over the house … we already know each other.

So, go to walk in the jungle, to strengthen the muscles and to take a little sun that I see here that you have been under a cloud for the last sixteen years. Not a ray of sunshine. Come on, come on, what are you waiting for?. Let’s pack now! “

Said and done!

My eyesight has not veen fixed, but my lower back pain and humor have. The good humor I mean, because the bad one was left in Lund.

The truth is that this birthday makes me think about the good things that have happened in this decade of life that is closing. Not only in those that have happened this year, which has been the icing on the cake. And they have been many and very good.

The forties has been a good decade! In the forties I found the love of my life, my nephews were born, and Kika appeared into our lives and I was able to fulfill my dream of having a dog again.

Together Frank and I have seen lemurs and swam with whale sharks in Madagascar; we have slept surrounded by lions and hyenas in a tent in Botswana and in a bed over crab burrows on the San Blas islands in Panama. And we have enjoyed half a year of gnochis and pasta, a lot of pasta in Florence.

In this decade, and largely due to good influences, I have also become much more aware of the seriousness of the environmental crisis we are experiencing, and of the urgency of introducing changes.

Starting with changes in my lifestyle. First I abandoned meat and this year fish, I lost all the silver mileage cards of the different companies due to shortages of flights and I made the decision to dedicate the rest of my working life to issues related to conservation.

The decade that is ending has been good, in some ways even very good. And I have the feeling that the one that comes in is going to be even better. A new stage begins, with new horizons and perhaps some changes. If this sabbatical year is teaching us one thing, it is that we must enjoy every minute of this life. And live it according to the voice of our heart.