FIFTY-ONE, STILL BECOMING

By Herman M. Lagon

Fifty gets the balloons. Fifty-one gets your laboratory results. That may be the first thing I have learned about being on this side of half a century.

When I turned 50 last year, the number felt important enough to deserve reflection. Half a century. Five decades. Fifty years of mistakes, second chances, classrooms, deadlines, friendships, arguments I should probably have avoided, meals I should probably have avoided too, and people who somehow stayed. I wrote then about grace—my mother, my daughters, my mentors, my students, my colleagues, and the communities that carried me farther than I could have carried myself.

Then came 51. No cultural drama. No “golden” anything. Nobody sells a “Welcome to 51!” package. You blow out another candle, answer birthday greetings, eat more than your doctor would recommend, and wake up the next morning still expected to answer messages, attend meetings, teach classes, pay bills, and remember where you left your reading glasses.

And perhaps that is precisely why I like 51. At 50, I looked back. At 51, I find myself looking around. The view is different.

You begin noticing that your body has developed its own memorandum system. At 25, you could sleep at 3 a.m. and report for work the next morning as if nothing happened. At 51, your body sends an official communication—with attachments. The knees have comments. The lower back requests reconsideration. The belly takes stock. Your eyes insist that restaurant menus be printed in something larger than microscopic Times New Roman. Sleep, once something you postponed, becomes one of life’s underrated luxuries. My reading glasses, which I once joked had become an identification card of age, are now practically office equipment.

There is humor in all this, but also a lesson I resisted when I was younger: the body keeps records.

For years, many of us treated health as something to think about later. Later eventually arrives. The annual physical becomes less ceremonial. Blood pressure and FBS numbers suddenly become interesting. You start reading food labels you once ignored. Walking is no longer merely getting from the parking lot to the office; it becomes something you deliberately make time for. And when a friend your age—or younger—suddenly becomes ill, the message becomes difficult to dismiss.

Still, I refuse to treat 51 as the beginning of some long farewell. That would be a terrible waste of perfectly usable years. In fact, one of the surprises of this age is how unfinished I still feel.

There are books I have not read, places I have not seen, ideas I have not understood, research I still want to pursue, columns I still want to write, advocacies I still have to forward, students I have not yet met, and mistakes I am apparently still perfectly capable of making. After decades in education, I increasingly appreciate the strange freedom of saying, “I do not know.” At 31, I might have felt compelled to provide an answer. At 51, I am more interested in whether it is the right question.

Maybe experience does that. It does not necessarily make us wiser. I have met enough people my age to know that birthdays and letters after one’s name do not automatically produce wisdom. Sometimes age simply gives our bad habits more years of practice.

What experience can give us, if we allow it, is perspective.

Some battles lose their appeal. Some opinions no longer require rebuttal. Some invitations can be declined without inventing a fictional emergency. You slowly learn that peace is not cowardice, silence is not always surrender, and saying no does not require a three-paragraph explanation.

This may be one of the quieter freedoms of getting older: fewer auditions.

For much of adult life, we audition. We try to become the competent employee, impressive professional, dependable parent, respected leader, successful whatever. We collect credentials, titles, positions, photographs, certificates, and occasionally responsibilities we secretly wish somebody else had accepted. There is nothing inherently wrong with achievement. Work matters. Excellence matters. Ambition can be life-giving.

But eventually you begin asking a more uncomfortable question: After all the proving, who exactly are you still trying to impress? What really are your non-negotiables?

At 51, I would rather do work that matters than merely look busy doing it or fight for a raise.

That shift has changed how I see teaching too. Earlier in a career, success can feel like knowing more than the people in the room. Later, the more satisfying moments often come from watching somebody younger discover that they can do something without you. A former student succeeds. A younger colleague finds his voice. Someone you mentored becomes better than you at something you taught him.

There is a peculiar joy in becoming less necessary. Psychologist Erik Erikson called this impulse in adulthood “generativity”—the desire to nurture what will outlive us. I understand the word differently now. It is not about building monuments to ourselves. Sometimes it is as ordinary as sharing what we know, opening a door, recommending somebody younger for an opportunity, listening without hijacking the conversation, or allowing the next generation to do things differently from us.

My daughters have taught me this perhaps more than anyone. Parenting adult children is a humbling transition. There was a time when you decided what they ate, where they went, and what time they came home. Then one day they have careers, decisions, dreams, and lives that no longer require your permission. The parental job description quietly changes from directing to accompanying.

That takes adjustment.

So does watching one’s own parent grow older. Suddenly, the people who once worried whether you had eaten are the people you worry about. In my case, my mother’s familiar “Kakaon ka na?” has acquired more meaning with every passing year. At 50, I wrote that I had finally understood such ordinary questions as acts of love. At 51, I understand something else: there will never be an unlimited number of them.

Time feels different when you know that. Not frightening, necessarily. Just more expensive.

You become choosier about where it goes. A night with family matters. So does coffee with an old friend, a walk without checking the phone, a ridiculous conversation that accomplishes absolutely nothing, or dinner where nobody is trying to network with anybody. Friendships deserve more deliberate care because adulthood has a nasty habit of turning “We should meet sometime” into five years.

Work can consume whatever time we surrender to it. There will always be another report, meeting, accreditation, deadline, research project, class preparation, message marked urgent, or document somebody needs “ASAP.” I have spent enough years in education to know that the institution will somehow continue after we go home.

The people waiting for us may not always be there. That thought has become sharper lately, not morbidly, but gratefully. The source material I gathered for this reflection repeatedly circles around the same realities: health becomes harder to ignore, friendships require attention, work begins to be measured differently, and purpose increasingly matters more than applause. Circumstances at 51 vary enormously, of course. Some are beginning again. Some are caring for parents. Some are supporting children. Some are rebuilding finances, changing careers, grieving, falling in love, studying again, or simply trying to get through the month. A birthday guarantees perspective no more than a diploma guarantees wisdom.

I am still learning mine. I still worry unnecessarily. I still overcommit. I still occasionally mistake urgency for importance. I still say yes when my calendar is already begging for mercy. I can still be stubborn, impatient, and too convinced of an idea. Fifty-one has not magically transformed me into a serene man watching sunsets while dispensing wisdom to younger people.

Thank goodness. That sounds exhausting. What has changed is my willingness to catch myself sooner.

I pause more. I ask whether something is worth the energy it will take from me and, more importantly, from the people around me. I try to notice where I am useful and where ego is simply asking to be fed. I am learning that a meaningful life may require less accumulation and more attention: attention to people, health, work worth doing, ordinary joy, and those quiet inner nudges telling us when something no longer fits.

Last year, at 50, I called my life a pilgrimage shaped by grace, companionship, learning, and growing. I still believe that. But 51 has added a small correction. A pilgrimage is not meaningful because of how far you have already walked. Neither is life.

You can have five decades behind you and still change your mind. Still apologize. Still learn something badly at first. Still begin a new project. Still laugh too loudly. Still fall flat on your face. Still make a friend. Still become kinder. Still surprise yourself.

Fifty was a milestone. Fifty-one feels more like Tuesday. And I mean that as a compliment.

Because after the celebrations, photographs, greetings, and reflections, life returns to its ordinary form. There is breakfast to eat, work to do, someone to call, a body to care for, a mistake to correct, a person to forgive, something new to learn, and perhaps somebody younger who needs the door held open.

Maybe growing older is not mainly about counting what is left. Maybe it is learning, finally, to stop wasting what is here.

At 51, I am still here. For now, that is more than enough reason to keep becoming.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.