The Middle Ages ...

Middle age is a funny little animal.

If youth is a lion and our golden years are a wise old owl, the middle is a capybara.

It's cute, but let's be honest, it's really just a giant rat.

No one likes the middle of anything.

If you're baking a cake, the fun is in the crack of the egg, the clack of the whisk against the mixing bowl. It's the oven timer announcing the big moment, and slathering the icing across the top.

I know of no one who would say the best part of the process is the baking. Maybe somewhere in a movie montage, a kid from 1981 with nothing else to occupy their time sat longingly in front of the glass (far too close for today's parenting comforts) waiting for the moment to come, ripe with anticipation.

First and foremost, we technically have no idea what constitutes middle age, since we never know when we are going to call it quits. Every study is different, but a pretty fair average based on CDC estimates is that middle age is 37.9 for men and 40.55 for women.

I'm forty-five years and seventy-nine or so cents at the time of this writing.

I'd love to think that I'm still on the way to the middle … that I'm still approaching the midpoint of the story.

What if I'm there right now, though?

Worse off, what if I'm WAY past it?

There's a reason people buy sports cars, strike out for Mount Everest, and take up wing suit flying in their forties and fifties.

It's because the midpoint of the story, wedged squarely between the possibility and hard charging of Act 1 and the reflection on lessons learned of Act 3, is the one that needs a plot twist so badly.

It doesn't have to be as exciting as a car payment you can't afford, a case of altitude sickness, or flirting with becoming a pancake against the side of a mountain.

It could be as simple as taking a trip, taking a class, or taking a chance.

Each one could turn the messy middle into a back half of the story worth staying up all night to read.

If my midpoint is today, I know what I want, more clearly now than ever before.

More importantly, I know exactly what I don't want, and that's given me the gift of freedom.

EO