The Gift of Middle Age: Enjoy Your Lot.

I am 44 years old today—a birthday that sounds older than it feels. Whatever this number signifies, there’s no denying I now dwell squarely in the realm of “middle age.”“The harvest will be different now in your midlife,” says the poet David Whyte in his Midlife and the Great Unknown. As each year goes by, I sense the trajectory of life shifting, like a rocket that has reached altitude and now begins the gradual arc toward its destination. The open-ended future of my 20s is behind me. There are