VISCIn Chinese, forty is traditionally called the age of buhuo—the age of being “without confusion.”
When I was younger, the phrase felt distant and abstract. It sounded like a solemn summary handed down by the ancients, but it was hard to understand what it would mean in an actual life.
Now that I have gradually reached that age, I have begun to form my own understanding of it.
Being without confusion does not mean that you understand everything, or that you will never be troubled again. At forty, people still encounter things they cannot make sense of. They still have emotions, hesitate, and carry matters they cannot immediately put down. It would be unrealistic to claim that confusion simply disappears.
Yet something does begin to change.
You become less puzzled by the world and by some of the rules through which society operates. In the past, certain things seemed impossible to accept. You resisted them and asked why they had to be that way. At this stage, you may still dislike them, but you generally understand why they work as they do. You also know that emotion alone cannot change many outcomes.
The result is not necessarily broad-mindedness. It is closer to a gradually developing sense of proportion.
You begin to know what deserves your effort and what does not.
You also learn that some people do not need to become close friends, some relationships do not need to be maintained, and some occasions cost nothing to miss.
One of the clearest changes in me over the past few years has been the way I think about relationships.
I used to be influenced by sayings such as “more friends make things easier.” I thought networks were important and relationships needed to be cultivated. Knowing more people seemed inherently useful. Even when I did not want to attend a gathering or felt uncomfortable in a relationship, I would tell myself to maintain it, leave some room, and keep it in case it became useful one day.
That belief has faded.
It is not that people no longer need contact with the outside world after forty, or that friendship becomes unnecessary. It is that you increasingly see that many relationships are not as important as you imagined, and many social activities are not as valuable as they appear.
Some gatherings are lively, yet leave you only tired when you return.
Some people stay in frequent contact without ever becoming truly close.
Some relationships continue from inertia rather than genuine care.
Slowly, you begin to subtract.
You attend fewer events that you never really wanted to join. You reduce the relationships that feel forced, and stop spending time and emotional energy maintaining situations that you already know have little meaning.
I now skip most outside gatherings. Unless there is a particular reason to go somewhere in the evening, I return home and eat with my family. That life does not feel dull to me. It feels grounded.
I once thought there were always events worth attending, people worth meeting, and occasions that could not be missed. Now my reasoning is more direct: if they bring nothing real into my life and instead disrupt its rhythm, there is little harm in not going.
At this stage, you increasingly know what is important to you.
For me, family comes first.
That conclusion did not arrive in a single moment. It developed gradually. Many things that once seemed important can be placed farther down the list without causing much harm. Family is different. The time you have together is genuinely diminishing, little by little. Sharing a meal, sitting quietly together, and keeping daily life steady become more concrete and more important as the years pass.
Another change is the desire to live more freely within the part of life I can control.
I had conflicts with classmates when I was a student. Because we remained in the same environment, our lives continued to overlap and some discomfort had to be set aside. Later, work and life introduced me to people I did not like. For practical reasons, I often kept their contact information and maintained a surface-level peace.
Now I think that if there is no real connection left, and no intention to create one, there is no reason to keep it.
Dislike is dislike; disagreement is disagreement. If those old relationships no longer need to be faced, they do not need to occupy space in my mind. Delete them or block them where appropriate—not out of anger, and not to make a statement, but because there is no reason to let them keep taking up part of your life.
The older I get, the more I believe that by forty, a person should learn to clarify the boundaries of their own life.
Who is worth drawing close to, and who is not?
Which relationships should remain, and which can end?
What truly drains you, and what leaves you more at peace?
This filtering may make the outside world smaller. I do not think that is necessarily bad.
Sometimes a smaller external world creates a quieter inner one. That does not mean shutting yourself away or ending all contact. It means no longer depending so heavily on outside excitement to prove that your life is going well.
Must everyone have many friends? I increasingly think not.
If there are people with whom you genuinely connect, whose company feels comfortable, and who also want to be close, that is wonderful. If there are not, it may not be a serious problem. Not everyone needs constant activity, a large social circle, or endless interaction in order to live well.
Sometimes, making sense of your own life and your family’s life—keeping it steady and less internally conflicted—is already very difficult.
This may be what “without confusion” means to me now.
It does not mean suddenly becoming exceptionally clear-minded, capable, or wise. It means gradually knowing which matters no longer deserve your anxiety, which people no longer require you to force yourself, and which forms of excitement have little to do with you.
You stop blindly reaching outward and stop allowing outside standards to push you so easily. You become more willing to reserve time for the people who truly matter, energy for work that is genuinely worthwhile, and slowly bring your life back into your own hands.
Seen this way, forty does not seem so frightening.
It is not a sign that life has begun to decline. It may be the beginning of finally learning how you want to live.