Fifty versus “THE FIFTIETH”
When I was approaching my fiftieth birthday, I decided that I would celebrate that milestone with a party. I invited classmates from grammar school, high school, and college who had or soon would be celebrating their own “half century” milestone.
Clearly, after fifty years, I had not kept up with all of my classmates but I was successful in extending my invitation to about fifty of them. I figure that this feat, in itself, was pretty good. Of course, not all my classmates lived locally and were free of plans for that evening but I was able to gather enough of them to have a nice party.
One classmate sent me a card with an amusing quotation attributed to Arnold Schwarzenegger. “When I was turning fifty, I realized one-third of my life was behind me.” This was thought-provoking. It is unlikely that Arnold or any of us will live to be 150.
I think that, when most people anticipate their half-century marks, they start to consider the likelihood that they are closer to their deaths than their births. Oh yes! There are centenarians around. As a matter of fact, I recently organized a reunion to celebrate 49 years since my high school graduation. One of my classmates did not attend because the reunion fell on the same weekend as the celebration of her father-in-law’s 103rd birthday.
Personally, I hope to live to be 100 but I do not hold expectations of breaking any aging world records after that point. There are approximately 50,000 centenarians in the United States today. You never hear of 100-year high school reunions. This is because the average age of a high school senior is 18. A 100th high school reunion would have to welcome 118-year-olds. To my knowledge, there is nobody that age alive today. This is why there are no one-hundred years high school reunions.
I believe it is important to attend your fiftieth high school reunion. There will be some in your class who have already lost that opportunity because of death.
You may have mixed emotions as you consider the prospect of getting back together with your high school classmates. Here are a couple of lines of advice from a poem called “Desiderata.” which may apply to your participation at the reunion. The poet, Max Ehrmann, cautioned; “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.”
Whether you look back at your high school experience as “the best of times” or “the worst of times” it was a significant amount of your time. Assuming that you had a perfect attendance record, which I had, you would have been together with your classmates at least 720 days! This is reason enough to show up for your fiftieth.
You may wonder what you and your classmates will be talking about at the reunion. I am pretty sure that I can predict that. Psychologist Abraham Maslow thought about human needs and growth and wrote down his theory as a hierarchy. The first two levels are about basic survival but the next three are relevant to this discussion.
3. Love and belongingness needs – friendship, intimacy, affection, and love, – from work group, family, friends, and romantic relationships.
4. Esteem needs – achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, self-respect, and respect from others.
5. Self-Actualization needs – realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth, and peak experiences.
You and your classmates will speak of academic accomplishments, careers, marriages, children, grandchildren, and in many cases, great-grandchildren. You will share accounts of challenges met and travels enjoyed as well as various retirement activities. You will marvel at experiences your classmates have had and they will marvel at yours. For some of your classmates, the reunion will mean reconnecting for the first time in half a century. For others, who were the proverbial “high school sweethearts” and married soon after graduation, their lives will have been intimately intertwined as they approach their golden wedding anniversaries.
Reconnecting is perhaps the most valuable feature of a reunion. Very often, people who have lost touch with one another over the years reestablish bonds that will continue for the rest of their lives. The obvious bonds are those of friendship but remember that Maslow also mentioned romantic relationships. A significant number of romantic relationships are sparked or rekindled at reunions. Paths, that may have diverged for a half a century, re-converge. Whether it has to do with young love or the common background experiences, later marriages between high school classmates abound. So if you are currently single and looking, all the more reason to attend THE FIFTIETH.