with

Mike Bellah

I like to think of midlife as a season: It is the autumn of our years.

Like autumn, midlife is our season of harvest. These are our peak years when the things we labored over so intensely in young adulthood begin to pay dividends.

Midlife, too, should be celebratory. It is a season in life for remembering and reflecting, a time to take pleasure in past and present abundance.

Midlife: Is it the best term to describe today's 40 and 50-year-olds? Demographer Cheryl Russell doesn't think so. She says that baby boomers are far too young thinking to accept the stereotype of midlife, so she calls us the "midyouth" generation. 

Give me a break Cheryl. Sure 50 in the '90s looks different than it did in the '50s, but like it or not, we have not been youth for some time now. Personally, I think my youth ended at age 31 when I pulled a hamstring in both legs while chasing a lazy fly ball in a slow-pitch softball game.

So "midyouth" doesn't work for me; however, I don't think the term midlife fits well either. Face it; 50 is not midlife for most of us, not unless we're going to live to be 100. For the average person midlife ended at 38, about the time most experts say the midlife phenomenon begins.

In New Passages Gail Sheehy comes closer to a working definition of the term. She calls this stage "middle adulthood," which makes sense. I, for one, didn't feel like an adult until age 25 or so, and 50 is midway between there and the average life expectancy.

Yet while Sheehy's term might explain, it doesn't inspire, so I have another suggestion, one that finds its analogue not with people but in nature. I like to think of midlife as a season: It is the autumn of our years.

Perhaps I love the term because I love autumn so much. The brightly colored leaves, the crisp cool mornings, the signs and celebrations of harvest, all turn me on. But beyond my personal tastes, autumn describes midlife well for several reasons.

Like autumn, midlife is our season of harvest. These are our peak years when the things we labored over so intensely in young adulthood (family, friendships, education, work) begin to pay dividends (grown children, grandchildren, good friends, time-acquired wisdom in our professions).

In addition, autumn is a season without the pests of spring and summer, things such as flies, mosquitoes, and weeds. Similarly, midlife is free from some of the pesky baggage of youth. Remember when a bad pimple would ruin a day at school, or when peer pressure might keep you from hanging out with "old" people?

Midlife maturity tends to eliminate the trite and petty from our experience. Midlifers know that life is too short to let personal vanity or the fickleness of public opinion keep us from daily joys.

And most of us can't think of autumn without thinking of our harvest celebrations, which in the U.S. center around Thanksgiving Day, a special time with family and friends when we pause to consider how blessed we are. Midlife, too, should be celebratory. It is a season in life for remembering and reflecting, a time to take pleasure in past and present abundance.

Of course, there is a chill in the air in autumn, a reminder that winter is not far behind. Similarly, in midlife we begin to face the chilling fact of our own mortality. People, like leaves, die and return to dust.

Yet with winter comes Christmas, and Christmas presupposes Easter. Yes, the flower fades and falls to the ground, but its seed will bloom again. And so autumn is a hopeful time: it reminds us that this year's harvest was last year's seed. 

So welcome fellow-boomers to the best season of life; this is the autumn of your years.