Babies seemingly have it easy. They get to sleep as long as they want, eat when they want, they get carried around and cuddled alot and told they're beautiful, even when they're not. They have new, exciting experiences each and every day. But there are drawbacks - they can't enjoy chocolate and they have to wait for someone to change their nappy.
Toddlers lives seem fun. They never seem to tire, they are perfectly satiated from a single savoy cracker (think of the grocery bill savings) and they spend half their day giggling. However, they do spend the other half of their day whingeing and crying and screaming that they want to watch their shows on the TV.
Primary school was enjoyable, wasn't it? Learning activities were disguised by fun, engaging puzzles and other activities; Sport, Music and Art were major subjects of the curriculum and all your teachers were "the best in the world". In the early years kids are pretty nice to you, homework is fun to do and Mummy personally drops you off and picks you up from school. You do start to realise though that school holidays are transient and you slowly start to appreciate weekends and public holidays.
Your Secondary School years are something you either look back on as the best days of your life or the worst. Teenagers can be cruel and these are the years when you're at your most vulnerable - these are the days of pimples, periods and peer pressure. Forget the three "R's" - these three "P's" are more relevant. Your whole life can be ruined by one false choice of clothing on out of school uniform day. Still, life is pretty carefree and you don't realise how great these days are until you're well entrenched into the 9-5 grind of working life and then it's too late to go back.
University. Now, that was fun. Uni isn't a prize for those that studied hard so they can be rewarded with a high paying career - Uni is a reward so you can sit around the cafe bludging for 4 years (interspersed by brief periods of burning the midnight oil to get something handed in on time). But for the most part, Uni is a period of working part time to support your nightclub habit, whilst you hang around with friends during the day. You are finally treated as an adult - yet you still carry on like an immature twit half the time (hey, I was 17 and at Uni so I can be forgiven).
The workforce. We make choices in high school to pave the way, we study hard at Uni (well, sometimes we did) to get good grades to get us noticed and once we get there we wonder what all the fuss was about. Getting up at 6.30am every day, sitting on Punt Road in traffic for 1.5 hours each way every day and dealing with office politics, or a difficult colleague and trying to juggle the tightrope that is Mother vs Worker is not that much fun. Monotony. I can think of a million jobs I would not EVER want to do, even for one day, let alone every day forever. I am 39 and yet I still don't know what I really want to do when I "grow up". I think you either have a passion for something at a young age and want to pursue that dream, OR life has a way of handing you a career you never would have considered otherwise, OR you just sign up for something because it pays the bills. So the only positives I can think of for this phase of life are: money, satisfaction/pride in a job well done, friendships made at work, intellectual stimulation and engagement/creativity/stim
Parenthood. OK, so now you're either married, or you've got a life partner, or you've created human life via some other means. This is where the fun OR nightmare, whichever way you perceive things, really begins. Having someone totally reliant on you is scary, yet exhilarating. You've never known such love existed until now. Your bond with your partner deepens. You feel a REAL sense of purpose and direction. But on the downside, to quote from one of my favourite films, your "whole life is have to".
Empty Nest. The kids all move out. You finally get to turn their bedrooms into your scrapbooking studio or music room or whatever takes your fancy. You don't have to listen to their doof doof music or have to lie half awake when they come home at three in the morning. Your grocery bill more than halves and you can get all your ironing done during one episode of Bold and the Beautiful. But the house is awfully quiet and you are having to count the days when you last spoke to your child, let alone saw them. They are so caught up with their own lives now.
Grandparenting. Your children have their own children. They are the joy of your life. They come to visit and you shower them with kisses and chocolate. You spoil them rotten - they can jump on the couch, eat nothing but crap all day long and watch TV for 8 hours a day, and you can sit by and watch this, all guilt free. When they throw a sugar induced tantrum - you send them home with Mummy and get to eat your dinner in peace and watch whatever you want on TV with nobody making noise to annoy you. Money is tight though, and you worry about your health.
I won't go on. I don't want to even think about life beyond the Grandparenting (60's) kind of age group. I know life doesn't end at 69 by any means - which will relieve my Dad who IS 69, but I know anyone aged 70 or over MUST at least some of the time think that they are "old". I feel old and I'm not even 40. So what is the best age? They all have their own pros and cons. It seems that whatever age you are, there's some magnificent and shitty times ahead of you - I guess the golden rule is to make the most of the good times and not to let the bad times bring you down.
I, for one, hope that my 40's are awesome.
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