Life at Forty: Fragments of Autobiography

Forty is probably the most important age in life. By forty you have achieved pretty much all you are ever going to. You have exhausted your talents such as they are, and you will not go much further. You may enter into more experiences and responsibilities but if you haven't gained your ambitions by this time generally you are not going to in the future. There has been a recent case of a person achieving what must have been his life-long ambition at the age of eighty, but this is so unusual and even unnatural to be dismissed as an aberration. This situation is of course not appreciated or accepted by forty-year-olds because thy feel they are still in every way undiminished physically and mentally. I understand that the brain reaches its maximum performance level by the mid-twenties and then starts to decline, but this is not likely to be noticed until old age sets in and it becomes obvious. Forty is not recognized as the golden age it is. It is impossible at forty to even consider that you are not at a stage of maturity and experience to advance to further heights of achievement than have already been attained. In my experience I regard this age as one of my happiest and most successful, though it was fraught by all kinds of problems at the time. I achieved the peak of my financial earning powers and in other ways I was having the time of my life. But of course at the time the situation is not fully appreciated, most especially because ambition would still be raging in the breast. Over the next thirty years and more I went on to many varied experiences far wider in nature and vastly more exotic than anything before. But now in my late seventies ambition is at last stilled. I am happy and contented with my life as I have never before been, and I have a good standing in my personal status. But given the chance to reassess and choose a golden period, in spite of the ins and outs, the ups and downs of the time, it would be that age of those few glorious years occurring around the age of forty.