It must be remembered that the forty hour work week until age sixty five was designed by governments and corporations and not the medical profession.

The best thing about being 40 is that you can appreciate 25-year-old men more.

I nearer than I was yesterday and further than I am today, tomorrow I'll be square one.

Many people over forty have at least one health condition that affects their ability to work a forty hour work week effectively. Human Resources (HR), doctors and governments have known this fact for decades.

And the view was suddenly clear to me. The world opened out to its grim beyonds and I realized that, at forty, one must learn the rigors of acceptance. Capitalize it: Acceptance. I needed to accept what was put before me--be it a watery grave in Ireland's only natural fjord, or a return to the city and its grayer intensities, or a wordless exile in some steaming Cambodian swamp hole, or poems or no poems, or children or not, lovers or not, illness or otherwise, success or its absence. I would accept all that was put in my way, from here on through until I breathed my last.

Before forty, you think that exhaustion is something like a long-lasting hangover. But at forty you learn all about it. Even your passions exhaust you.