This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
When, exactly, does middle age begin and end? This past summer, my colleague Julie Beck tried to figure it out. Public opinion didn’t exactly offer a consensus: “In one survey, the median response put middle age as lasting from 40 to 60,” Beck writes. But The Wall Street Journal also reported a few years ago that 20 percent of people ages 25 to 34 claim they feel middle-aged. People tend to think about the term in relation to the age they currently are, Beck writes. “The older people are, the later they tend to think middle age starts and ends.”
At a certain point in her quest to define the exact contours of middle age, “I started losing my grip a little,” Beck writes. The numbers were nearly impossible to pin down, and “ultimately, middle age might be better understood as a feeling that creeps up on you than as a clear turning point.”
“It’s a time of life that is often both exhausting and fulfilling,” Beck notes: “when you’ve lived enough life to have learned some lessons, and also have plenty of time ahead of you to make changes.” That feeling may show up at 35, or 45, or 65. Perhaps all that matters is what we do with it when it arrives.
On the Phases of Life
When Middle Age Actually Starts
By Julie Beck
Trying to attach some numbers to a fuzzy phase of life
When Are You Really an Adult?
By Julie Beck
In an age when the line between childhood and adulthood is blurrier than ever, what is it that makes people grown up? (From 2016)
When Does Someone Become ‘Old’?
By Joe Pinsker
It’s surprisingly hard to find a good term for people in late life. (From 2020)
Still Curious?
- The new old age: David Brooks on what a new life stage can teach the rest of us about how to find meaning and purpose—before it’s too late (From 2023)
- Your professional decline is coming (much) sooner than you think: Here’s how to make the most of it, Arthur C. Brooks wrote in 2019.
Other Diversions
- The Americans having the most sex
- 50 songs that explain America
- An underappreciated problem with dating apps
PS
“I went on a Maui vacation in April 2026” and “spied this Gold Dust Gecko on the opening of a trash can,” Eilene L., 64, from Durango, Colorado, writes. “He was quite unperturbed as I took several close-up photos. The trash can opening proved to be an excellent backdrop to make the reptile stand out. Who’d have thought?”
I’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.
— Isabel