I was already glum about soon turning 40. Then I learned that happiness is U-shaped – it bottoms out in your 40s, then starts to inch its way up again in your 50s
All indicators to the contrary – the three children, the mortgage, the gray hairs, that little immutable fact that I was born in 1984 – the idea that I am approaching 40 is as discordant to my identity as is my bra drawer, which, since the pandemic and the birth of my one-year-old, consists mostly of slings. No, I think whenever I’m forced to confront my reality as an almost-middle-ager, I am still 22 and my silky, lacy undergarments would be more at home on a Victoria’s Secret billboard than in Ma’s closet on the prairie.
Yet here I am, along with vast swaths of other millennials who are starting to approach our most unhappy period of life. Oh, haven’t you heard? Happiness is U-shaped – it declines and bottoms out in your 40s, so report countless studies, until it starts to inch its way up again in the 50s. This is a remarkably consistent finding, across countries and cultures.
