Michael Eriksson
A Swede in Germany
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Turning 50

Introduction

Tomorrow, 2025-01-19, is my 50th birthday—and I find myself asking what the big deal about turning 50 is.

Nevertheless, 50th birthdays are a big deal to some, and I might as well put down a few reflections on the topic.


Side-note:

I actually set out to write something much more ambitious, using the 50th birthday as an excuse to, among other things, discuss some life developments, life choices, whatnot, that might seem unexpected to others.

That text was headed somewhere interesting, but also towards a number of problems, including large portions that overlapped (or, in the course of further writing, eventually would have overlapped) very strongly with other texts in planning, some cases of more self-disclosure than I am currently comfortable with, and a word count that would have ended up too high (even by my standards).

Correspondingly, I decided to cut the planned scope down to what is actually present—which is long enough.

(Parts of the original version already written might be integrated into those “other texts in planning” in due time.)



Side-note:

I make repeated references to ages, including those of others, below. These are typically to be understood as being counts of birthdays or, when I lack sufficient knowledge, year-of-reference-minus-year-of-birth. (In my own case, the two measures are almost identical.)

This, in part, for simplicity; in part, because it is conventional. My inner mathematician would prefer a system based on proper rounding, however. (Which, incidentally, would have made me 50 six months ago.)


The arbitrariness of 50th birthdays

As noted, 50th birthdays are a big deal to some. At the same time, they are something very arbitrary:

For starters, birthdays, as such, are arbitrary and it is not a given that any particular (current or past) culture actually celebrates them or, even, that any particular person in such a culture would know his birthday—or birth year. What is so special about yet another astronomical movement and what has the human at hand actually done to achieve that movement? And, from another perspective, how does a birthday change who one is relative just a day earlier? (I do not expect to wake up tomorrow and be changed in any notable degree or to a higher degree than on any other day.)

Even given that we do celebrate birthdays (know our birthdays, etc.), we have complications like what type of year and calendar to use. Even a year based on the-Earth-makes-one-rotation-in-its-orbit is in so far arbitrary that different measures (notably, “solar” and “stellar” years) can be used, and subtle differences in calendars using broadly one of these years can lead to different dates applying, as with the Julian calendar and its Gregorian descendent, which differ in the level of precision used to handle that the year is around 365 1/4 days—not 365. However, very different ways of counting are in use and can then lead to even larger differences in outcomes, as with the approximately 354 days that arise from a 12-month/-moon calendar. (With the length of the month also depending on what definition of month is used.)


Side-note:

Particularly great weirdness can ensue when a country switches calendar (notably, Julian -> Gregorian), or someone moves from a country with one calendar to a country with another or makes comparisons between two such countries.



Side-note:

With many other complications unstated—and assuming that we stick to the Earth and the conditions to which humans have historically been used. However, sci-fi has long noted complications like how to handle birthdays and nominal ages, should someone be born or living on another planet—a scenario that could happen within the foreseeable future. (Ditto if someone lives in another solar system or on a constantly traveling space ship; however, these scenarios could take much, much longer to actually occur in the real world. Then we have issues like the “Twin Paradox” and what events can be viewed as simultaneous from a physicists point of view.)


And what about birthday: Days do not begin and end at the same time in all systems. Today, midnight is a virtual standard for e.g. governmental purposes, but other times have been used, other contexts (notably, religious) might still require a different time, and there is no guarantee even that a fix time is used, as observable events, e.g. sunset, are common. Even when using midnight, we have complications like the use of different timezones (and the sub-complication that the “legal” timezone does not always match the “natural” one) and the use or non-use of daylight savings time. For that matter, a timezone is another convention that fiddles with the truth, as it pretends that a fix solar time would apply to a fairly wide band of longitudes and does so with an arbitrary “zero point”, where a shift in zero point could move an event to another (nominal) time or, even, date (also note a below discussion of the “zero point” when counting age).

It is not even a given that we should count age based on number of birthdays. Note e.g. an above remark on rounding and how most other measures of something apply rounding instead of truncation (which is what birthday counting implies). This even where time is concerned: if, say, reducing 11:47 to a full hour, far more would go with 12 than 11 in most contexts. Even apparent exceptions usually are not, unless related to age, as when a deadline set for “5 PM” does not allow 17:13—in the context of deadlines, “5 PM” is usually both intended and taken as a shorthand for “17:00” or even “17:00:00” and is a convenience of formulation. (While a human age in full years is virtually always taken to imply an interval of a year, e.g. from the one birthday to the next; and non-human ages, say of a city or a fossil, can be far vaguer yet.)


Side-note:

However, some care must be taken with conventions and it can pay to be more explicit—and counting age in birthdays is very much a matter of convention.

To illustrate the dangers of both conventions and poorly specified deadlines:

With my first long-term employer, a (project/team) deadline given as a day implied end-of-day of that day, something also customary with deadlines imposed by the government, “legal” deadlines, and similar. With my second employer and the first deadline there, I worked well into the evening of the day before the deadline and allowed myself to sleep long in the morning of the deadline, knowing that I had, maybe, two hours of work left to do, that I had until end-of-day to do it, and that it was better to do it with a clear head. I arrived at around 10 in the morning—and was promptly met with a call for everyone to be prepared for a code freeze at noon. And, yes, that was the first time that I ever had heard an actual time-of-day mentioned for that particular deadline.

The following two hours were very stressful—and for no good reason, as I could have come in at 9, had I known that an entirely different standard for deadlines was used.

(With later employers, the cut has virtually always been either end-of-day or an explicit time of day, documented and communicated well in advance.)


Then there are issues like what the “zero point” is. For instance, the Japanese appear to have once counted age from 1, making someone just born 1 year old, making me 50 since last year and 51 tomorrow, and so on. For instance, if a birth stretches over midnight, is the day of birth the day that the process began or the day that it ended? For instance, if the members of a pair of monozygotic twins are born on consecutive days, does it make sense to consider the one a day older than the other? (Apart from the practical problem of determining time of conception, it would be a better zero point than time of birth, especially, with an eye at biological ageing and issues around the prematurely born, as well as the above twin scenario. This would, again, put my 50th back to some point in 2024.)

Most importantly, however, there is nothing magic about the number 50. Even within the decimal system, it is just a “round” number—not a magic number. Even as “round” numbers go, it is no better than 40 or 60, and 10 could be seen as outright “rounder”. (The seemingly greater importance of 50 relative 40 and 60 arises, presumably, through 50 being half-way to 100. The mathematicians might prefer 31 or 32, to approximate the geometric mean of 10 and 100 and give a more natural half-way point.) However, who said that we must use a decimal system? Some systems in extensive past use have been more focused on, say, 20 or 60, while systems based on 2, 8, and 16 are important in computing (which could make 64 a big anniversary and 50 a non-event). What if humans had 8 or 12 fingers instead of 10? What if a non-positional system with entirely different characteristics was used?

How to celebrate?

Some type of special celebration seems called for, the arbitrariness notwithstanding. But what?

A party is out to begin with, as I do not enjoy parties in the slightest. (And I have, for various reasons, not built a social circle in Wuppertal that would allow a party that deserved the name, while my remaining extended family lives in Sweden and is mostly composed of retirees.)

Something special to eat more privately? Nothing really occurs to me that (a) is readily available, (b) has a special feel, and (c) is something that I am likely to enjoy. Foods that I do enjoy and that are readily available are not special, because I eat them whenever I want to anyway. I contemplated buying a cake, but then I imagined eating cake and found that it held no particular attraction over more everyday options. Some things that would have made great candidates, had they been available, are not available (cf. side-note). Etc.


Side-note:

There is a bit of a catch-22 involved in many cases. For instance, something like the Swedish version of cheese cake (very different from the one found more internationally) would have been special, but it would have been special because I have not eaten it in years, I have not eaten it in years because it is not available in Germany, and because it is not available in Germany, I would need to take extreme measures to get it, which rules it out as a birthday option.

(Well, maybe Ikea or some other specialist sells it in Germany, but getting to the nearest Ikea is a chore—and I would have no guarantee of actually finding what I came for.)


Going to a restaurant? I am not aware of any good and non-fast restaurants in the vicinity. The choice, then, would be between very non-special fast food and a lengthy excursion that would take more time out of my day than it would be worth. (And, this being a birthday, I find the image of Mister Bean and that steak tartar intruding.)

Bottle of champagne or (more likely in Germany) sekt? I can take it or leave it.

Some special gift-to-myself? I cannot think of anything that would increase my happiness in life, and I would, then, just be spending money for the sake of spending money.

Taking the day off to do whatever I want? Well, I will do that, but this applies to most Sundays and tomorrow happens to be exactly a Sunday.

Time does fly

A repeated observation of mine (and many others) is that time really does fly. (Also see several past texts, e.g. [1].) The last five years have gone by in express tempo, and it does seem as if every year goes by faster than the previous.

As frustrating as this can be (so much to do, so little time), I have at least been saved from another common complaint—that “How can it be that the days plural go past at such speed, when each individual day goes past so slowly?”. (The complaint might be more common among the elderly and retired, so knock-on-wood.)

However, here we do have an issue that looms larger and larger, namely that I will never be able to achieve all that I want to achieve. In particular, when I look at texts that I want to write and books that I want to read, my backlog grows faster than I can remove items without working myself to the bones. Indeed, even if I did work myself to the bones, which I will not, a lifetime would not be enough.

As a corollary, if I say that a particular text is “in my backlog”, “in planning”, or similar, this is by no means a guarantee that it will ever be written, let alone be written in the near future.

Aging

As far as aging goes, things look well so far. (But I note that the stereotypical take on 50 as the point where age becomes an issue might, in comparing today’s generations with those of 1925, be outdated or, even, originally exaggerated. To mention the issue of aging as early as 50 might be unnecessary.) I feel physically fine, I have no chronic pains or other known issues, and, barring the flexibility mentioned below, I cannot recall the last time that I found myself unable to do something that I could do twenty years ago. (Which is not to say that such actions do not exist. It might simply be that have had not had any need or wish to perform them in recent years.) I certainly look older today than those twenty years ago, but not disastrously so. Etc.

Two interesting signs of aging, however:

Firstly: After I began some minor training to delay age-related issues (as opposed to the “regular” training that I already did), I was rudely awakened to a lack of physical flexibility, e.g. in that I found myself very far from being able to “touch my toes” without bending my legs. (I am now working on improving such flexibility issues.)

Secondly: As a very small child, I was puzzled by the ridges that an old friend of the family had on her finger nails, whereas my own nails were smooth. I came to associate these ridges strongly with aging—and, today, I have them too. (If nowhere near to the degree that she did. Then again, she was likely in her sixties at the time.)

Death

The lack of time in life is, obviously, caused by death—and a death that is highly premature for those who actually enjoy life and try to accomplish something in life.

Oddly, I do not spend much time on death in my personal reflections these days, when I might have been in a mode of seeing life slip away all too fast (note that “time flies” again) and knowing that I might be about two thirds through my own life. This is likely caused by my repeated exposure to death as a child and how much time I, back then, spent thinking on death, on the disturbing fact that I, too, would one day die, and on the fundamental unfairness of death. Indeed, from my child’s perspective, why could not the world just go on forever in that little sphere of two children, two parents, and a dog, with good food, TV, and the occasional Christmas or visitor, with no-one ageing, no-one dying, and nothing really changing?


Side-note:

Exactly how old I was at what point of thought is hard to say after so long a time. However, my paternal grandfather died shortly before my second birthday and the fact of his death was clear to me from the beginning. (As was this early absence from my life: I never knew him in an even remotely meaningful sense, but I remember some point pre-divorce when I had been sad and pouting in bed in the evening because he was dead, and was brought into the living room to watch TV with my parents as consolation—well past bedtime. The “pre-divorce” gives an upper limit of 5.)

My maternal grandfather followed when I was seven, which might have triggered the greatest amount of thinking on the topic; and the family dog, who was very dear to me, not too long after that.

My later life contains a number of further deaths of note (including my mother, both grandmothers, and a cousin), but these came long after that child’s period of reflection on death.


Ages of others at various times

With 50, some comparisons with the ages of others might be called for, to put a few things in perspective.

For instance, the youngest of my grandparents was my maternal grandmother, who was still just 50 at the time of my birth. (51, a few months later.) In other words, I am entering a territory of age that I, as a very young child, associated with my grandparents.


Side-note:

However, that territory is quite wide, as my paternal grandparents were considerably older at the time of my birth—the paternal grandfather likely 67. (Although he died too early to leave a visual impression beyond photos. Likewise, obviously, my actual memories of the maternal grandmother began a bit later than my birth.)

From a more adult perspective, the maternal grandmother made it to 88, being the oldest of my grandparents at the respective time of death. She was also the chronologically last by just shy of 18 years.

The age differences arise from my paternal grandparents being slow starters: My paternal grandfather had his first child, my father, at approximately the same age as my maternal grandmother had her first grandchild, my oldest cousin. (In both cases, with reservations for unknowns.)


For instance, most of my contacts with my parents took place before I left for college (1994; mother) resp. Germany (1997; father, who lived in Stockholm where I studied). Both were 45 at the respective time (father a few days shy of 46). Even extending the interval for my mother to 1997 leaves her at just 48. In other words, I have left the territory of age that I, for most of my life, have associated with my parents.

For instance, keeping an eye at that arbitrary anniversary angle, my mother was 25 years older than I was for almost half the year, while my maternal grandmother (cf. above) was 50 years older for at least a small part of it. Had the two still been alive, and if we look at the respective right part of the year, we then would have had my grandmother’s 100 and my mother’s 75 to my 50—big anniversary-ages all around. (A similar scenario arose when I was 25, but I gave it no thought at the time.) In a next step, it is an interesting-to-me exercise to just pick some arbitrary age for one of us and compare where the other two stood in life. (As this is likely to bring little to the reader, I will not go into details, but I do recommend a similar exercise to others.)

Of course, similar ideas apply outside my family too, e.g. in that many whom I viewed as “old” at some past time, say a teacher, a colleague, or an actor on a TV show/in a movie, might have been younger than I am today. This the more so, when someone looked older than he was, with Pat Morita (“Mr. Miyagi”) as a notable example: In the first “Karate Kid” movie, he was approximately my age. (With him, “younger than I am” might have to wait a little while, but that clock is ticking fast.) For fun, we might even add the 2000s, the third millennium, the 21st century, or similar, to have a full sweep of 25/50/75/100 in terms of anniversary-ages (also see excursion).


Side-note:

Another very big birthday/anniversary is the U.S., which will officially turn 250 in 2026. Depending on where borders are drawn, this could be viewed as a case of slight overlap (most of January 2026) or a near miss. As, apparently, the “bicentennial” celebrations began in April 1975, I feel inclined to count it as a hit.

(As the recurring reader might have noticed, the U.S. features greatly in both my readings and my writings, and borders on being a hobby.)


Excursion on millennia, decades, etc.

I have seen a great many debates as to when a decade/century/millennium began or ended. These have all been misguided through missing the central point. Looking at “decade”, it is basically some group of ten—in context, ten years. Three examples of decades, using inclusive intervals, are 1970–1979 (“the 1970s”), 1971–1980 (hypothetically referable to as “the 198th decade”), and 1975–1984 (my own first decade). Indeed, they need not even deal with calendar years, and 1975-01-19 to 1985-01-18 gives a more accurate first decade for me. (At an extreme, one might even argue that ten non-consecutive years can form a decade, but such use could lead to great confusion.)

When it comes to the start/end of something, we then have to look at exactly what. The 1970s certainly began with the beginning of 1970 and ended with the end of 1979. Likewise, the 1900s began and ended with the years 1900 resp. 1999, while the 20th century began and ended with 1901 resp. 2000, because there was no “year zero”, which made 1–100 the 1st century, etc. (Where “the 1900s” are in the sense of a century. The sometime use to imply a decade is a further complication.)

The third millennium, then, began with 2001, while the strongly overlapping idea of the 2000s did so with 2000.


Side-note:

Such comparisons can be particularly tricky when different countries are involved, works are translated from one language to another, whatnot. For instance, English is more likely to use “the 20th century” than “the 1900s”, unless the exact beginning or end is of importance, while Swedish is the other way around with the rarer “det tjugonde århundradet” and the more common “nittonhundratalet”.