Zeroing in on 40
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Are You Turning 40 and Looking for a Profound Life Change?
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BY BRETT OPPEGAARD, Columbian staff writer
Amelia Earhart was just 22 days from her 40th birthday when her airplane disappeared while crossing the Pacific Ocean. She remarked before taking off on the world-spanning stunt, “I have a feeling that there is just about one more good flight left in my system, and I hope this trip is it.”
Her comments reflect the crossroads of the age. Turning 40 can be inspiring as well as deflating. Most people in the 19th century didn’t even reach that milestone birthday. But as medicine and sanitation improved, life expectancies dramatically rose. So did expectations and hopes. New crises emerged.
“This is the first time in history that people in their 40s, 50s and 60s are caught with their parents becoming dependent on them while they still have children in high school and college,” said Dr. Barbara Ensor, a psychologist specializing in aging issues at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, Md. “People in the middle of this ‘Sandwich Generation’ are pretty stressed out. They might have thought that this would be the time in their lives to take vacations and cruises. But that’s turning out to not be the case. That can be depressing.”
Add these new complications to classic mid-life-crisis feelings, and being 39 today ends up being more complex and emotional than ever.
Ensor said, “In a positive fashion, it’s a time to stop and look and evaluate where you’ve been and where you are going. Do you need to make major changes? Do you need to tweak anything? Maybe it’s time to go off on another career. … If you are given to a more negative interpretation, this is the beginning of the end.”
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