Turned 50 this year. Have two kids, 9 and 6.
Clearly, no one knows the day and hour their clock strikes. To some extent there's nothing you can do. I think of Jim Fixx, who, more than anyone else, popularized the idea of jogging for exercise in America. Dead at 52 of a heart attack. (FYI, he had just about every genetic variable against him, so the running unscientficallly probably gave him another decade.) The corollary of this is that you can't really draw conclusions about others. My best friend of literally 46 years has a pacemaker because his heart periodically races to 300 bpm and will die if his pacemaker malfunctions and he's not next to a hospital. Those are the cards he was dealt. I certainly feel the specter of death more than I used to. It is statistically very certain that more than half of my life is over. The degree to which celebrity/athlete deaths hit me is much harder now. Tim Wakefield passing at 52 or so a few months back was a stunner.
As far as my attitude to all of this goes, it ties in with my wife and kids. Everything I do is for them. Part of that is being capable, meaning physically capable. While the sense of mortality is more out there, I've decided that to the degree I can, I need to be able to do things for them and to not be too tired or or too weak to play with them or do activities. I'm lucky enough to have a metabolism that lets me be active; on my 50th birthday I was the same weight as I was in high school. But I've started strength training because I want to be helping my kids move into their college dorms. Given that everyone has their own mortality to deal with, I'm just focusing on what I can do to be the best I can for my family.
The other thing is moving work lower in priority. Saying yes to more events and more vacations, even little ones. I'm lucky that, as a business owner, I can dictate some of my terms, so I'm trying to make it so that more time is allotted for experiences big and small. And I'm also trying to say yes to more things and to try things I wouldn't normally have tried. I don't feel that there's a race to get every human life experience done due to a ticking clock. But my viewpoint now is broader and more relaxed than it has been in the past. I think that comes with age anyway; it isn't unique to me.
I can't control death or when it comes for myself or others, but I can control (to a point) my ability to be mentally and physically there for the people in my life. That's the gameplan for as long as I can sustain it. Also, I need to stay sharp for when Michkov comes over, as I'm expecting 70 points out of the gate.