Under Grumpa's Hat

Nobody lines up for the middle seat. Not on a plane, not in a movie theatre, and certainly not in life. The aisle has freedom. The window has a view. The middle has elbows, compromise, and the faint smell of someone else’s cologne. Yet somehow, that is exactly where most of us spend the longest stretch of our lives.

Between youth and old age sits a peculiar season. Too wise to be reckless, too restless to be still. Young enough to remember what freedom tasted like, old enough to understand the invoice that followed. It is the stage where calendars fill faster than dreams, and silence feels suspicious. This is the middle seat of life.

In youth, time felt infinite. We wasted it like it came with free refills. Sleep was optional. Mistakes were learning experiences, not cautionary tales. We chased everything with legs that did not ache and backs that did not complain. The future was a place we were always getting to, not something tapping us on the shoulder.

Old age, at least in theory, offers a different gift. Perspective. Fewer illusions, fewer apologies. Time becomes precious enough to handle with care. You know what matters because you have already learned what does not. The noise fades. The nonsense gets filtered. There is a calm that comes from knowing you have nothing left to prove.

But the middle? The middle is chaos with a decent haircut.

The middle is responsibility disguised as stability. Mortgages, deadlines, aging parents, growing kids, shrinking patience. It is a season where ambition and exhaustion share the same bed, and neither sleeps well. We are productive, capable, relied upon. We are also busy in a way that convinces us life will start again once this phase is over.

The cruel joke is that this phase is life.

This is where days blur together. Mondays sneak up faster. Years pass in quarterly reports and school terms. We tell ourselves we will slow down once things settle, unaware that things never actually do. They just change costumes.

There is a quiet danger in the middle seat. Not failure, not disaster, but postponement. We delay joy the way people delay vacations, always waiting for a better time. When the kids are older. When work is calmer. When the money is better. When we are less tired. When we feel more like ourselves again.

The problem is that “again” is a moving target.

Somewhere along the way, living becomes a task we schedule instead of a thing we do. We eat standing up. We scroll instead of listening. We plan trips we never take and conversations we never quite finish. We measure success in output while quietly starving the parts of us that do not fit neatly into a planner.

The middle seat teaches a hard truth. Nobody is coming to give us permission to enjoy our own lives.

We wait for retirement to breathe, forgetting that breathing is what keeps us alive. We wait for weekends to live, forgetting that five out of seven days are not practice rounds. We wait for someday as if it is a destination, not a decision.

This is not a call to quit your job, sell everything, or run off barefoot into the sunset. It is simpler, and far harder than that. It is a reminder to be present while carrying the weight. To laugh in the middle of the mess. To choose moments over milestones.

The middle seat is where discipline meets desire. Where wisdom whispers and restlessness kicks the seat in front of it. It is uncomfortable because it demands balance. You cannot live like you are twenty, but you cannot wait like you are eighty either.

So what do we do with the in-between?

We use it.

We stop treating joy like a luxury item. We stop apologizing for wanting more than just survival. We take the trip even if the timing is imperfect. We make the call even if the conversation is awkward. We sit on the porch a little longer, even if the inbox is judging us.

We remember that a meaningful life is not built later, but layered daily.

The middle seat offers something youth cannot and old age no longer needs. The ability to act on what we know. We have enough experience to choose better, and enough time left to make it count.

One day, we will look back on this season the way we look back on old photographs. Not remembering how busy we were, but wishing we had noticed more of it while we were there.

The middle seat may not have the best view, but it has something far more valuable. The chance to live fully, right now, while life is happening.

And that, elbows and all, is a seat worth staying awake for.