the.com/midlife
the moment you realize half your tickets are punched and the ride doesn't slow down.
means The middle period of a person's life, roughly the years around age forty to sixty, often associated with reflection on aging and accomplishment.
from A transparent compound of "mid" and "life" — "mid" tracing back to Old English "midd" (middle), a cousin of Latin "medius" and Greek "mesos." "Midlife" itself is a fairly modern joining, with the now-famous companion "midlife crisis" entering common speech only in the latter half of the 20th century, when a psychoanalyst's phrase escaped into ordinary anxiety.
- happiness curve
- Well-being dips around 47, then climbs back up.
- crisis myth
- Most people never have one; the term was coined 1965.
- peak earning
- Income usually maxes out in the 40s and 50s.
- sandwich years
- Many simultaneously raise kids and care for parents.
- reinvention zone
- Career switches and new ventures spike in this decade.
dante's inferno midpoint — medieval poem literally set at life's midpoint (age 35), when dante is 'lost in a dark wood'
jung's life stages theory — psychiatrist identified age 35-40 as critical psychological turning point in 1930s work