When I was going to be 40, I used to say that to me, as long as my body is as good and strong as it has always been, this is just an arbitrary number that everyone attaches too much meaning to, and I meant it. But I did notice how people around me kept on cracking jokes about it or even telling me I was in denial. I got pretty annoyed, feeling like some of them were just making the jokes you are "supposed" to make, others really resented the fact that I was not about to become gloomy about it just to please them.

I have noticed in many instances that from the day one is born, there are numbers, age-wise, everyone really makes a big deal out of. So I feel that many people would not be as affected by "middle age" if within their culture it was not so ostensibly expected of them to have a "crisis". QED, if you read the article, in one culture people are congratulating each other when they reach middle age and feel proud and happy about it.

The only real thing is reassessing where you are headed, revising your inner picture of yourself and your transition from parent to ex-parent. But why can this not be viewed as a gradual process? Maybe because the years of raising children are so full of hectic and responsibility, that there seems to be no time to reflect on or prepare for the moment the last child leaves home. It can come as something of a shock at a time where the hormone-levels are changing and one is therefore more susceptible to depression. But these two things do not HAVE to coincide exactly, in fact they usually do not, especially since mothers these days generally have their first child a lot later than say twenty years ago. Also most women these days get medical support if their hormonal levels sway to much. And we stay in good health longer than we used to in general, and in any case this is very different in each individual. For every 70-year old that needs dentures and walking aids, there is another one that is still in full glorious health.

So it could be that our expectations about middle age and midlife crisis are based on coinciding factors that no longer coincide or even happen. All the more reason to not be daunted by the number "40".