I am about to turn fifty.
That sentence is supposed to land with weight. It is supposed to signal a shift. A slowing down. A settling in. There is an unspoken checklist that comes with it. How a fifty year old should act. What they should enjoy. What they should have outgrown by now.
I am aware of all of that.
And I still love going to Disney.
Given the choice between doing the thing adults are expected to do and doing the thing my kids are excited about, I will choose my kids every single time. Not because I am trying to be the cool dad. Not because I am clinging to youth. But because joy is not something you age out of. You either protect it or you slowly trade it away for appearances.
I still feel like I am fifteen.
I still slide down the hall in my socks when no one is watching. I still do backflips on the trampoline. When there is an open stretch of ground and I can run, I run. Not to prove anything. Just because my body remembers how. I love electric scooters. I love mud runs. I love the feeling of being tired because I played hard, not because I sat still too long.
My office is filled with toys. Not decoration. Not irony. Actual toys. Things that make me smile when I look up from work. I keep relics from my past around me, not because I am stuck there, but because they remind me where my curiosity started. Video games still make sense to me. They always did. They still do.
My wife says I still see myself as a kid.
She is not wrong.
But I think what she really means is that I never agreed to the idea that growing older required becoming smaller. Quieter. More reserved. Less playful. Somewhere along the way, we decided maturity meant restraint, and adulthood meant detachment. As if wonder was something you were supposed to politely set down once you reached a certain age.
I never did.
Turning fifty has not made me feel old. It has made me feel clear. Clear about what matters. Clear about what I refuse to give up. Clear about the fact that my kids are watching, not just how I work, but how I live. They are learning what aging looks like by watching me do it.
And I want them to see this.
I want them to see that growing older does not mean growing rigid. That responsibility and play can live in the same body. That joy is not childish. That movement is a gift. That curiosity is worth protecting. That becoming an adult does not require abandoning the kid you were, but learning how to carry him well.
I am turning fifty in a few weeks.
I still feel fifteen.
And honestly, I hope I always do.