As the new year issues its annual invitation to stocktake, the thing I keep thinking is where we might place the equivalent emotional pivot points, those periods in which, after years of – God willing! – pottering along feeling roughly the same, suddenly, one day, there’s a change. I turned 50 at the end of November, which in any age prior to ours, would put me safely on the other side of a full-scale midlife crisis. Three big pivot points in a life when one becomes, briefly but acutely, aware of time passing, and which in my experience, tends to hit during even-numbered years (for that reason, I’ve always preferred the lower pressure of odd-number ages). That’s the other thing about these pivot points: their unavoidability.

Source: The Guardian January 01, 2026 13:31 UTC