Middle Life and the Transition to Old Age

Abstract

There are two more transitional stages with fuzzy boundaries to consider: the changes that occur between young adulthood and the (post-ponable for only so long) state of middle age, and then the consolidating retreat into unequivocal old age. But then, people settle down and start a family earlier or later; grow more emotionally mature and stable more quickly or more slowly; physically age at different rates; attempt to defy or embrace change in more or less successful ways; and nod at ‘time’s wingèd chariot’ or try to hide from it, so there is no fixed developmental timescale at work here.

If it be not now, yet it will come — the readiness is all.

—Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2