This book represents an attempt to think through some of the central features of middle age from a philosophical perspective. I have drawn throughout on my own experiences in order to make sense of the phenomenon – or, rather, phenomena – that constitute middle age. At the core of these experiences was one event that changed my life forever: in a single moment my life was turned inside out and I was left having to rethink just about everything that was important to me. Nothing looks to me now as it once did, and this book forms part of my attempt to make sense of how it all looks now, and how it used to look.

Because I have drawn on the experiences of my own life in order to write this book, it may well be that it contains passages that suggest a contradictory or conflicted account of middle age. I have not sought to smooth out any of these discrepancies, and I am not disturbed by their presence in a work of philosophy. The only point in seeking to erase them would be in order to try to show that life is less contradictory or conflicted than it actually is.

My reflections here can make no claim to completeness, and I have not had any kind of ambition for such finality in mind in working on them.