I. The Basics ↑
4. Each human life is a journey through a series of stages.
Each of us advances through life in a series of stages.
We can think of these stages in different ways, and they may manifest differently for different people, but there are certain predictable common elements.
For example, new research indicates that the structure of our brains change at four key ages: 9, 32, 66 and 83 years.
Very roughly, we might think of the following stages.
| Age | Characteristics |
|---|---|
| 0–4 | Learning how to exist in the physical world, and how to relate to peers, in a social environment dominated by parents, who are sources of nourishment and of education |
| 5–11 | Learning basics of living in a social environment with other humans, including oral and written communications skills, in a social environment dominated by parents and anointed teachers. |
| 12–18 | More advanced learning, including knowledge of wider society, in a social environment where peers and others begin to have greater influence, and where new and alternative ideas and cultural expressions start to compete with those that have been offered to us by parents and teachers. |
| 19–30 | Learning and application of specialized skills that make us useful to society. |
| 31—65 | Productive application of specialized skills, along with accumulation of stuff and status. |
| 66—82 | Reduced productivity, gradual shedding of stuff and status. |
| 83–?? | Declining health, wealth and status, as well as feelings of diminished relevance to, and understanding of, the changing world around us. |
These age groupings and associated characters are meant to be suggestive, rather than definitive.
But they should at least serve to start us thinking about ways in which our understandings, attitudes and interests typically change over the course of our lifespans.
Words from Others on this Topic
We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.
Marcel Proust, 1918, from the novel Within a Budding Grove
Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.