Will Slater: 'I am meant to feel overwhelmed by my insignificance'

IN THE gap between ambition and reality, hope and expectation, we lumber along, the vagaries of life nudging us nearer or further away from an idealised state, where our bank account and good humour are overflowing, our children are content, clever, modest, sporty and happy to eat cabbage and the buffeting winds of fate fill our sails to serenity and success.

Right now, the buffeting winds tend to near blow me off my bike, the sink is overflowing and while I hope the children are content, they certainly won't eat cabbage. Which is pretty much how I expect things to be.

So I laughed when my brother-in-law joked that I was entering the year that statistically is the most depressing for men.

Yep, 46 is the age when Western Everyman is meant to finally realise he's not going to be the CEO of a multinational company, score a try at Murrayfield, sink the winning putt at the Open, front a rock band, marry a supermodel, become a millionaire or ... fill in whatever material/emotional fantasy you want here.

Never mind that if I was born and raised in Angola, Mozambique or Afghanistan, where just being 46 exceeds average life expectancy, I am meant to feel burdened by ennui, paralysed by torpor and overwhelmed by my insignificance and all round failure in the world.

Throw in expanding waistlines and receding hairlines and the male crop from 1965 are, in 2011, meant to tot up the debit and credit of life and feel a little short changed. As if the effort of living is like constantly being on the wrong mobile tariff - too few free minutes.

And in the cold light of February, it would be easy to succumb to such nonsense.

It's true that a Nobel Prize does not sit on my mantelpiece, but a swimming cup won by my nine-year-old does.

I don't own a Ferrari, but you try getting five people in a Testa- rossa and not having a holiday home in Gstaad or St Kitts means no worries about excessive air miles.

As a young reporter on a local paper, I did write-ups for couples celebrating their golden weddings. We printed then-and-now pictures and paid tribute to them, their love and place in the community. Yet I really didn't get it.

I hadn't met the person I share my life with, let alone had children and while faithfully reporting their gratitude that the fates had been kind to them, along with the names and ages of their children and grandchildren, I was too young to grasp what great things they had done.

So this is for the children of 1965 and our ordinary, insignificant lives full of amazing things.

This article was first published in Scotland On Sunday, 06 February, 2011