“Life begins at 40.”  Whoever started that urban legend must have been one grumpy dude.  The research shows that happiness is actually lowest in our 40’s.

Pity us 40-somethings.  We are are at the low dip of a U of happiness, according to the latest research.

In our 20s we feel there is a big prize to be gained and we rush out into the world gung-ho, conquistadors chasing the gold, explorers going where no-one has gone before.  The world is ours, nothing can go wrong, onward and upward.

In our 40s, we realize there is no prize, at least not for us.  Somebody else has already been where we thought no-one had gone before – to the prize table.  And the first prize they grabbed was a vacuum cleaner to suck up all the other prizes. We won’t be Prime Minister or star quarterback or super model or even just filthy rich. We are at that point where we reflect upon all our failures and why we didn’t make “something” of our lives.  Or, we are simply too busy juggling kids and mortgages and schedules and stress to even remember that we had a dream that we had once been sure we were going to fulfill.

In our 60s comes reflective wisdom, where we realize that the prize didn’t matter anyway, because that’s just not what life is all about.  While we were busy with the kids and the mortgages and juggling schedules, we actually were conquering life one day at a time.  We were living the dream.  We were truly living.  Yes, chasing after a dream is exciting and charges you up with energy – and that is a form of happiness – but the calm of reflection in later years also brings on happiness.

Too bad we have to pass through the valley of despair to conquer the other peak.

Read more about the study conducted at Warwick University and Dartmouth College here.