The July of Your Life
July 2nd, 2009I’ve decided I am in the July of my life. You see, I am a “woman of a certain age.” It’s a nice euphemism for middle-aged. Now this should be obvious to anyone, since my website says that I have more than 20 years of experience in fundraising. But I don’t want to think of myself as middle-aged. So I think of myself as in the July of my life.
Isn’t “July of your life” a nicer expression? Let’s say you were going to live to be 84. It’s a little older than the average age of death, but it’s good to be ambitious. So, every seven years of your life would be one month. Now frankly, January and February aren’t that great as months — they’re just cold. March isn’t much of an improvement. That kind of correlates to childhood and youth. We tend to look back at childhood and our teenage years with this rose-colored view, but frankly, while you’re in it, there’s a lot of frustration. There are many things you can’t do, you have bossy people watching your every move and telling you what to do, and your body isn’t under your control. (I remember one of my nieces at a few months’ old, crying because she couldn’t figure out how to crawl. Once she mastered it, she was all over the place, but we forget how frustrating it is as children when we can’t do things we want to do.) So January through March isn’t all that great, though there are good moments.
April, May and June are wonderful, but they’re not the end of everything. July and August are terrific. September, October and even November are fabulous months, too. And while December may be cold, it also has a lot of great times.
So, instead of deifying childhood and youth, as I think many of us tend to do, by saying “I’m in the July of my life” I’m saying that I’m at a great place now, and I have a lot to look forward to.
There’s a few lines about this in the play “The Fantastics” — “The days dwindle down, to a precious few, September… November….” So this idea of the months of your life isn’t original to me, I know that. But I take solace in it.
Where are you in your life?
I’m a fundraiser, so if you have questions about raising money, please write me, Katherine Wertheim, CFRE, at katherine@werth-it.com or post a question on my blog at www.werth-it.com/blog.