Is Middle Age the End of Life?

In glancing through the headlines on the New York Times website, an article in the Opinions section caught my eye. In "I Feel It Coming Together," columnist Judith Warner takes a seemingly meaningless moment of her day--her daughter singing along to the Fame soundtrack--and turns it into an overwhelmingly pessimistic commentary on middle age.

Warner comments on the carefree and invincible approach to life that teenagers like her daughter are able to take on as they struggle through adolescence. This approach, Warner argues, includes a sense of urgency and passion that is lacking in the everyday life of average middle-aged women like herself.

The most heart-wrenching moment of the piece comes in Warner's statement: "This is the cruelty of middle age, I find: just when things have gotten good - really, really, consistently good - I have become aware that they will end."

While I am personally terrified of approaching middle age (even though I have a good couple of decades to go), I think Warner is obsessing a bit much over the "end," while she could be delivering positive views on living in the moment. I look at my parents, who are now living as empty nesters in their mid-50s, and see a happy couple who have settled down and are satisfied with that. This begs the question: why do people in their middle age always feel the need to relive their teenage years or accomplish something? Isn't their a model that we can look to, aside from the midlife crisis, that can offer insight on achieving contentment in middle age?