Society treats 40 like the closing credits. Research says some abilities peak in your 40s or later. A funny case for editing your own chapter.
The Audacity of Treating 40 Like the Closing Credits
The audacity of society to treat 40 like the closing credits when you feel like you're just starting to understand the plot.
Apparently, by 40, you're supposed to have found yourself, healed your childhood wounds, established financial security, figured out love, and settled into a respectable routine of buying throw pillows and discussing cholesterol.
Meanwhile, some of us are just now meeting the most interesting versions of ourselves.
Maybe 40 is the chapter where you finally stop letting everyone else write it.
The short answer: Research suggests no single age is the mind's peak. A 2015 study by Joshua Hartshorne and Laura Germine found that some abilities peak around high school graduation, some begin declining in the 30s, and others do not peak until the 40s or later, including the ability to read other people's emotions.
The Receipt Drawer: The Checklist, Audited
I audited the list. Here are the findings, and yours may vary.
Found yourself. Still loading.
Healed your childhood wounds. In progress. Results vary by wound.
Established financial security. Ask me after the next insurance renewal.
Figured out love. Working draft. Several chapters are under revision.
A respectable routine of throw pillows and cholesterol. Throw pillows are fine. Cholesterol is a number. Neither one is a personality.
Nobody has been able to tell me who set the deadline.
Filed Under: Absolutely Not: Editors of the First 39 Chapters
Here is a partial list of the editors on the first 39 chapters. Yours may vary.
The relative with notes on your hair.
The version of you at 22 who was very confident about everything.
The man who explained your own life to you.
The magazine that told you which decade your body was allowed to wear a swimsuit.
Every comment section you have ever read.
All of them filed their edits with great confidence and no byline.
The Thing Nobody Warned Us About: The Brain Didn't Get the Memo
In 2015, psychologists Joshua Hartshorne and Laura Germine published a study in Psychological Science that compared when different mental abilities peak. Across thirty cognitive tasks, they found considerable variety. Some abilities peak around high school graduation. Some plateau in early adulthood and begin to decline in the 30s. Others do not peak until the 40s or later.
One of the late bloomers is the ability to read other people's emotional states. MIT News, reporting on the study, said that skill peaked in the 40s or 50s.
So the ability to understand the plot peaks right around the time society hands you the closing credits.
The study is a snapshot of tested groups, and an average cannot tell you about your own mind. It does undercut the old idea that the whole mind peaks at once and then slides.
The Group Chat Would Understand: The Most Interesting Versions
Some of us are just now meeting them.
I'm 44, which makes me five chapters into the first draft I actually get to edit. In those five chapters I have met a woman who runs at the track by the waterway three or four times a week, a woman who writes a Sunday letter for strangers, and a woman who answers to Honey.
I did not expect any of them. All three are better company than the version of me who was busy being respectable.
The Permission Slip: Three Editor's Marks
Take a pen to your own draft this week.
Cut. The chapter someone else wrote about who you should be by now.
Keep. The line that made you laugh at the wrong time.
Add. One thing you want that nobody asked you for.
Editors use marks. You are allowed to have a pen.
The Last Word Before Dinner: The Table of Contents
Society handed me the closing credits. I'm using them as a table of contents.
And frankly, the first 39 chapters had some questionable editors.
— Jessica
