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In a 2021 Atlantic article that I’ve now learn many instances, the author Deborah Copaken displays on her time spent with one other author, Nora Ephron. A random telephone name (“Hello, Deb, that is Nora Ephron.” “Yeah, proper. And I’m Joan of Arc.”) led to a decade-long friendship between Copaken and Ephron—or, as Copaken calls her, “this daughterless girl who has all however adopted me and several other different girls.”
Copaken’s article, excerpted from her memoir Ladyparts, catalogs her personal midlife challenges in addition to Ephron’s demise, in 2012. The article helps these of us who’ve lengthy beloved Ephron get to know her higher, however what resonates with me most are the three classes Copaken has gathered from the rom-com auteur about navigating center age. Ephron, Copaken wrote, “teaches me, by instance, methods to navigate the postreproductive half of my life.” Right here’s how:
- Collect pals in your house and feed them.
- Snicker within the face of calamity.
- Reduce out all of the issues––folks, jobs, physique components––that now not serve you.
I’d enterprise to recommend that these guidelines apply at most ages. However right this moment’s studying record focuses on that period of life we name the “center”—what makes it particular, and methods to discover a singular form of happiness inside it.
Three Guidelines for Center-Age Happiness
By Deborah Copaken
Collect pals and feed them, chortle within the face of calamity, and minimize out all of the issues––folks, jobs, physique components––that now not serve you.
The Puzzling Hole Between How Previous You Are and How Previous You Assume You Are
By Jennifer Senior
There are good causes you at all times really feel 20 p.c youthful than your precise age.
By James Parker
Your physique begins to betray you. You might have neither the vitality of youth nor the license of outdated age. However being over the hill has its pleasures.
Nonetheless Curious?
Different Diversions
P.S.
I’ll depart you with some phrases from James Parker’s ode to center age:
“You’re extra free. The stuff that used to obsess you, these grinding round ideas—they’ve worn themselves out. You realize your self, fairly properly by now. Life has launched you to your shadow; you’ve met your darkish double, and confidently the 2 of you will have made your lodging. You realize your mates. You like your mates, and also you inform them.”
— Isabel
