I'd say the best time of life is your mid-thirties, roughly from thirty-two to thirty-eight. I'm thirty-six myself and I work as a primary school headteacher in Kathmandu, so maybe I'm biased, but I genuinely believe it.
At this age, most people have settled into a career and know what they're good at. Many are raising young children, buying or building a home, and taking on more responsibility at work. It's busy, but it's usually a period of building things rather than searching for them.
Personally, I feel very happy to be here. When I was in my twenties, I was constantly anxious about whether I'd chosen the right job, whether I'd ever marry and what other people thought of me. Now those questions are mostly answered, and I've stopped worrying so much about other people's opinions.
The main reason I think it's the best time is that you have a good balance between energy and experience. You're still healthy enough to play football with your kids, travel and work long hours, but you've also made enough mistakes to have learned from them. In your twenties you have energy without wisdom, and later on you may have wisdom without as much energy. There's also a sense of purpose. I'm responsible for a school of four hundred children and for my own two sons, and although it's demanding, I feel useful every day. Of course, it has stresses, like money and having almost no free time. But when I look at my parents, who are in their sixties, they agree. My father says his mid-thirties were the years he felt most alive.