Health Revolution. Maria Borelius

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      The unexamined life is not worth living.

       – Socrates

1. A NEW YEAR

      It’s a new year, 2013.

      I’m fifty-two years old, and I’m feeling puffy and washed out. Christmas has brought way too much of everything: pickled herring, gingerbread, cheese sandwiches on raisin-studded Christmas bread, schnapps, toffee and boxes of chocolates devoured at lightning speed. And on the heels of this festive excess came a New Year’s trip to the shores of Kenya, with cocktails at sunset and three-course dinners with wine in the velvety African night.

      The trip back takes twenty-four hours. When we get home and I have to carry my bag upstairs, I feel like I’m eighty years old, even though I’ve just spent a week in the sun. There’s a dull ache in my lower back and my joints hurt. I’m in the throes of perimenopause, and my period shows up fitfully, on its own schedule. My feet are sore and swollen.

      And then there’s my belly. Or my ‘muffin top’, as the women’s magazines like to call it: a jiggling roll that desperately wants to spill out over the waistband of my jeans. These days, every visit to a clothing shop ends the same way. After admiring all the figure-hugging pieces, I’m drawn like a magnet to long tops that cover and disguise.

      I also have constant little infections and keep coming down with colds and sore throats. An ongoing low-grade urinary tract infection has led to repeated courses of antibiotics, which make me feel tired and a little sick.

      This is what it’s like to start ageing. Sigh.

      I guess there’s only one direction to go now, and that’s downhill.

      So thinks a melancholic part of me.

      Another part of me snorts. ‘Don’t be so pretentious. Be happy you’re alive! You have healthy children and can work. Get on with life.’

      Fair enough.

      But a third side of me is looking for something more.

      It’s part of human nature to want to improve yourself. You don’t always have to accept the cards that life deals you. We want to shape our own destiny. The questions burn in me – because it’s more than just my back, my belly and my infections.

       Whatever happened to that strong and happy younger woman?

      She may still be strong and happy, but there are longer stretches between the bright days. More and more often, I wake up feeling melancholy, or ‘blue’, as people say. I feel blue all over . . . or grey.

      I regret all the things that I didn’t have time to do with the children when they were younger. I grieve for my dead father and brother and for my mother, who is ill. I become annoyed more easily when I run into problems at work, and I see obstacles as personal defeats, instead of seeing them as challenges that can be solved with creativity and willpower, the way I would have done in the past.

      I make a mental checklist.

      How is that life balance going?