36 for the win

There are the days on which my mercurial appliances take against me. Days of looking at bills and bank statements and dying plants. Days when my left and right knees are at war as to whose turn it is to give me hell.

On such days, I look down the long, narrow corridor of my life and I ask myself: “Self, was there a better time in your life? One you’d give your best handbag to go back to?”

The answer is elusive. When are these glorious times people look back on with great nostalgia and one beer too many?

According to Clare Mehta – whose work dominates the study of the what-age-do-you-wish-you-could-be corner – it’s around 36. Surprise. She calls it “established adulthood” (ages 30-45) and, sure, it comes with perhaps unprecedented demands on your time and money, but throughout her study, people seemed to be in a more settled, confident place than at any other time in their lives.

This is not cast in stone. No research is, and it’s especially awkward when, as in the case of Mehta’s area of interest, not too many other people are paying it much mind. Many, many people are thinking about what makes for a happier life. A longer life. A life lived better. But looking for a magic age that science suggests is a sweet spot for any kind of majority – nada.

This was a study I might easily have brushed past, but something kept drawing me to it. Turns out I’m quite pleased with my established adulthood find. After going through the phases of shock, rejection, and deeming her work ridiculous (you know, the usual analytic process), I ran into another surprise. Her number worked for me.

Here we find ourselves at the crossroads of what-we-think-we-know and what-we-never-really-thought-about. You might instinctively veer towards saying childhood was a blast and didn’t have a care in the world. Or you loved those early twenties with new-found freedom, first jobs and being solidly licensed to drive, vote and drink. These definitely answer the question for some people.

And yet. I look and I look some more, and I find my early 30s and then early 40s were, in the words of Tina Turner, simply the best. (Just because she was talking about a “who” and not a “when” is no reason not to give her a citation.)

In 2018, the Harvard study on adult development was 80 years old. They studied a group of men for that long hoping to find out…things. High on the list of things was an understanding of what created a happy, healthy life.

Having and keeping good relationships (friends, partners, family) was the key. The director of the study, psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, says: “Loneliness kills. It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.”

So now, when I look at my surprising time of good times, I see a gathering of good bonds and the ability to appreciate them, and it makes more sense.

My childhood was uneventful in the way you talk about people going on long journeys: I was free of plane crashes or being assaulted by vagabonds. And it was lonely. Same goes for my teens and into the 20s. My sister who says I won the friend lottery is not wrong. I’ve had great friends. I just didn’t know how not to be lonely.

At its birth in 1938, the Harvard study only looked at men. I wonder what the results would have been like if women had been included. When and how do women and men form strong ties and how are they different? And in a study on wellness conducted with a primarily white male cohort, what are the things we could have seen if people of colour had been in the mix? Or people of immigrant backgrounds?

Nostalgia, I’ve read, may be a good and healing thing. Potentially useful in therapy in Positive Psychology Interventions (PPIs). I think that’s still under review, so I’ll not try to justify it just yet, but it did make me think of my own rapaciousness for little bits of the past that make me happy.

All I miss of my childhood is reading, playing with sticks and being near the sea. All I miss of my teens is the physical shape I was in. The constant craving for the boy who was not besotted with me the way I was with him I will definitely pass on.

You may be perfectly contented now and have no desire to time-travel. But if you do, go on and do it. Just don’t live there at the expense of now.

Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition.