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Re the phenomenon you mentioned, of sentiment welling up, it is a well-known feature of late middle age, and IMHO it is partly the tug of approaching end of life issues, and partly it's an exaltation of vision, from the tiny circle of infancy to the slightly wider one of childhood, to the blurring-fast whirl of kaleidoscopic images and situations in adulthood, to (finally) the rising above former concerns to a widers, integrative view of the world and people's place in it -- and of what they're doing to each other. It's a sense, I think, of the tragedy of life, as well as its grandeur, its pathos of loss and pain in many countries amplified by knowledge of one's own time of grieving yet to come, but soon.

Probably the best, most insightful, description of 'late middle age' perceptions that I have ever come across.

I am sixty-five years old, and my husband is sixty-six. We have been together forty-five years, and are experiencing precisely what you described.

We may occasionally need a new hip, and we may not remember what we had for breakfast, :) but we are so much better able than ever before to view the whole, to integrate and arrange our life's experience into a wide-ranging, yet concrete, view of the world around us -- be it in the workplace, or on a global scale. We appreciate and value beauty, suffer injustice (ours and others'), comprehend the complexities, and understand the depths, of everything so much more than we used to.

I gratefully return your kind words. You appear to have not only uncanny insights, but the ability to express them beautifully.

Best to you and yours --

~ joanie