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  3. Midlife: Is it the best term to describe today’s 40 and 50-year-olds? Demogr

Midlife: Is it the best term to describe today’s 40 and 50-year-olds? Demogr

游客2024-08-17  42
问题     Midlife: Is it the best term to describe today’s 40 and 50-year-olds? Demographer Cheryl Russell doesn’t think so. She says that baby boomers are far too young thinking to accept the stereotype of midlife, so she calls us the "midyouth" generation.
    So "midyouth" doesn’t work for me; however, I don’t think the term midlife fits well either. Face it; 50 is not midlife for most of us, not unless we’re going to live to be 100. For the average person midlife ended at 38, about the time most experts say the midlife phenomenon begins.
    In New Passages Gail Sheehy comes closer to a working definition of the term. She calls this stage "middle adulthood," which makes sense. I didn’t feel like an adult until age 25 or so, and 50 is midway between there and the average life expectancy.
    Yet while Sheehy’s term might explain, it doesn’t inspire, so I have another suggestion, one that finds its analogue not with people but in nature. I like to think of midlife as a season: It is the autumn of our years.
    Perhaps I love the term because I love autumn so much. The brightly colored leaves, the crisp cool mornings, the signs and celebrations of harvest, all turn me on. But beyond my personal tastes, autumn describes midlife well for several reasons.
    Like autumn, midlife is our season of harvest.【F1】These are our peak years when the things we labored over so intensely in young adulthood begin to pay dividends.
    In addition, autumn is a season without the pests of spring and summer, things such as flies, mosquitoes, and weeds. Similarly, midlife is free from some of the pesky baggage of youth. Remember when a bad pimple would ruin a day at school, or when peer pressure might keep you from hanging out with "old" people?
    Midlife maturity tends to eliminate the trite and petty from our experience.【F2】Midlifers know that life is too short to let personal vanity or the fickleness of public opinion keep us from daily joys. Midlife, too, should be celebratory. It is a season in life for remembering and reflecting, a time to take pleasure in past and present abundance. [br] The writer’s personal impression of midlife can be described as______.
选项 A、sentimental
B、short
C、care-free
D、fruitful
答案 D
解析
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