The Unexpected Shifts of Midlife

Research from Stanford Medicine in 2024 shows that adults experience two major changes as thay age – one around age 44 and another around 60. This confirms what many people feel: we don’t age steadily, but in noticeable jumps. As the new year begins, I’ve been thinking about similar turning points in our emotional lives – times when, after feeling stable for years, something suddenly changes.

I’m experiencing one of these shifts now. It shows up in small ways, like stopping to watch a bird or a snail on the way home from school.These moments feel like stepping into a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It’s hard to explain, but it feels like a sense of things ending. It’s not a deeply sad feeling, but more like a gentle sadness for the nostalgia I’ll feel later.

These feelings are often triggered by events – for me,it’s my children’s last year of primary school. But culture also plays a role.I turned 50 in November. In the past, that would likely mean I was well past a midlife crisis. But today, 50-year-olds frequently enough look and act much younger, as if they’re still in their 30s. So, everything feels delayed by about ten years. And here I am, in what I call my “looking-at-trees” phase.