THE NUANCE

Why We Should All Adopt a 60-Year-Old’s Mindset

There’s a reason happiness peaks just after middle age.

Markham Heid
THE NUANCE
Published in
5 min readJul 1, 2024

--

Probably older than 60, but the closest I could find . . . Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

In a 1954 letter to a friend, the spy novelist John le Carré wrote that he was “miserably tired of trying to live for the future indefinitely. I want to live for the present.”

The line jumped out at me because I’ve been feeling the same way. A lot of my idle thoughts these days fall into two categories: worrying about the future or regretting choices I made in the past. My mind seems eager to look ahead or wander back.

Be here now is a popular mantra among the mindfulness crowd, and I’m often not. I’m somewhere else.

This habit of mind seemed to show up around the time I hit middle age, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I may be sliding into the “midlife well-being dip” we’ve all heard about.

Around the world, and regardless of socioeconomic status or education levels, people find middle age a drag. And that may be an understatement. “The effects of the mid-life dip . . . are comparable to major life events such as losing a spouse or becoming unemployed,” wrote the authors of a 2022 study.

“There is a huge amount of evidence to support this dip — over 600 published papers,” said David Blanchflower

--

--

THE NUANCE
THE NUANCE

Published in THE NUANCE

Each week, THE NUANCE offers a close and sometimes critical examination of health, wellness, and social science topics. If you’d like to propose a topic, or if you’d like to publish something on THE NUANCE, please email me at mheidj@gmail.com.

Markham Heid
Markham Heid

Written by Markham Heid

I’m a frequent contributor at TIME, the New York Times, and other media orgs. I write mostly about health and science. I like long walks and the Grateful Dead.

Responses (21)