I remember reading a letter to Ann Landers, the syndicated columnist who could solve everyone’s problems. A woman complained that she had just turned 40 and her life was over. How could anyone cope with being past life’s prime? Ms. Landers replied by publishing a letter she received from a young man in his early twenties who was suffering from a form of cancer that would inevitably, in a short time, end his life. “I will never see age 40,” he said.