Bucket List? Sky dive? Yawn. Live your real dreams, not tired cliches

I WAS an early developer when it came to a midlife crisis, displaying the more obvious cliches at least ten years earlier than most. At around 32, my male menopause was plain for all to see. Especially when it came to girls, cars and the paranoia of not knowing who I really was.

I also suffered from the selfdoubt and over-analysis that can send a person nuts. Perhaps this is why I was able to recognise the gathering clouds second time around and found myself whispering: ‘We’ve been here before and we’re not going through all that nonsense again.’

Taking time to regroup is a very wise use of time, but start from the point of self-congratulation as opposed to self-flagellation.

Don’t worry what you haven’t got. Reflect on what you have and how to keep it. Beginning with as high a vantage point as possible, have a good look and make decent notes.

Don’t skip this stage. This will help head off midlife cliches like the dreaded bucket list – millions of which have terrorised the world into frenzies of ‘before it’s too late’.

Ride a Harley across America. Yawn. Sky dive. Double yawn. Get a tattoo. Triple yawn. Have a threesome. All right, fair enough. The thing about bucket lists is not what’s on them. All the above are perfectly acceptable, but not as part of a synthetic rollercoaster ride drawn up as an admission of what you have missed out on.

To really fulfil our dreams, careful and respectful attention must be paid to what we really yearn for.

For years, I ‘thought’ I’d like to move to Italy. But visiting Brindisi, as red as a beetroot and desperate for creature comforts, I realised the locals don’t speak English. It wasn’t Italy I liked, it was Italian restaurants I could walk to.