As someone who more or less started a midlife crisis last year, this rings true. Among other things, there's a social double bind that lies at the root of this that must be examined.
On one hand, young people are framed as unable to understand themselves and that they must suck it up and act like adults. On the other hand, when those that do "suck it up" later end up in crisis, they are demeaned with, "You should have figured yourself out by now."
I yearn for a world where midlife crises are a cause for community celebration. One where we can say, "Tayo42, this is an important time in your life and everyone is here to rally around you while you navigate these feelings."
Instead we seem to socially allow for, but discourage people from self reevaluations - that there's a window in midlife for people to rediscover themselves, realign their goals, and sort out their lives, but instead of celebrating, we discourage it. And for what? So that we maintain the illusion of some sort of identity integrity?
Maybe I have something to learn here, but it would be hard to convince me that the current state of the social response to crises is anything but maladaptive.
There are those who don't have the resolve to go through with it, but end up in this persistent feeling of emptiness brought about by self-alienation.
And those who do enter into some crisis, but feel the social friction when their actions run counter to norms but the relief of internal alignment associated with self-actualization.
It's pretty sad that rather than offering social support to folks in crisis so that they have a safety net during this process to limit the downside, we've instead inverted the environment to limit the upside. The opportunity loss is confounding. There's a terrible self-reenforcing mechanism at play which goes like this, "Look, things are terrible for people in crisis. Don't be like them," all while contributing to the terrible environment that's being positioned as inevitable.
The state-run, compulsory alternatives seem a poor substitute, and I'm not sure we're socio-biologically equipped to make the transition. The only way forward seems to be to identify the cause(s) for the dissolution of family and community as reliable networks and revert/fix them.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0-7432...
'Midlife' is not about how long do you live, it's about how advanced you are in the expectations of the social life script, after 'raving youth' and 'settled elderly'.
I once read a book about Ulyssean aging, IIRC. It described persons such as Thor Hyerdal who in essence started new lives (full of recognized accomplishment) near age 60.
The mindset stability that came in the past few years has been nice. Hustling for the shiniest immediate goal in sight no longer appeals, but there's plenty of energy to go after long-term goals in ridiculously effective ways. The sort of laser focus and disregard for extraneous bullshit that 10 years ago I couldn't even imagine was possible.
It's nice. Life is barely getting started.
More realistically, a man who is 35 years old has a life expectancy of another 43 years, so not quite there yet.
Resources are higher too. For lots of things that used to take time, I can just pay someone.
And lets not forget I spent the first 10 to 15 years being basically useless.
It's crazy how much this can vary. I'm 34, but I'm female and from a family where multiple people have lived to be over 110. I've always estimated my 'mid life'/halfway mark to be about 45.
You are. Most people don't realize that until they're in their 40s.
It won't feel that way though, I understand.
My measurable physical stats are much better than they were at 26. Yes I notice junk food a little sooner and can't handle as much alcohol. But I can run a marathon faster, do better in the boxing ring, and can lift more weight with higher volume.
The main physical drawback that I can see are slower reflexes. That comes out in the boxing ring when going against people 10+ years younger.
> intellectual peak early to mid 20s.
Depends what kind of intellectual peak you measure. My focus is better and more intense. My ability to learn new stuff has greatly increased because I have a bigger vaster framework to hang new knowledge onto.
And I am infinitely better at solving difficult problems in a dumb easy way because I no longer care about showing off how smart I am. This not only makes my solutions easier to build, they're also easier to maintain so future me will have less work to do.
What I'm probably less good at these days is waxing poetically about the sort of very deep thoughts that feel deep to a 25 year old. And pointless brain twisty puzzles that I was never good at anyway.
I'd say these days, intellectually speaking, I'm more of a reliable orc that plows through problems with brute force, than an elf fleeting about using dexterity.
Coincidentally, I read an article in the Economist about male fertility that said 35 is when a man's sperm starts to become less effective. So, slightly less than full of life, I would say.
That said, I've also always found the terms "middle aged" and "midlife crisis" to be weird due to them not really making a lot of sense literally. Idioms like this seem pretty common in everyday language though, to the point of being standardized; as a young kid I was shocked when my punishment for some minor thing that was supposed to be for the "weekend" extended into Sunday despite the fact that our family calendar clearly showed it as the beginning of the week, not the end. It's not just language either; the earliest New Year's Eve I can remember, my parents had a very hard time convincing me that we had changed from December 31 to January first at 12:00 because it seemed so unreasonable to me that 12 would be the first hour of the day instead of the last, and I felt cheated that I didn't get to stay up until 1:00 like I expected.
I was 43 when my father was diagnosed with a bad cancer that would kill him two years later (at 69).
Those things together triggered a lot of things that I think made up a mid life crisis, now I'm 48 and it seems to be getting better.
That's why you need to let go of this idea of some awesome 2 decades of retirement where you finally get to enjoy and do all the things you want.
You'll be broken, half your friends are dead or dying, the kids won't visit, and you have no energy.
I'm being intentionally brutal to make it as clear as I can. Whatever you want to do, do it NOW. During good years.
Obviously, throwing the future to the wind and only caring about the present is stupid, but like you say there is absolutely an argument to be made that we should make the most of the time we have right now because tomorrow isn't guaranteed.
35 years from now.
Think about how much the world, technology, politics and ideology have changed since 1987. If you think the born-now will honor your retirement claim (that you/gov are making since new-born can't agree?) then, yeah, go for that retirement thing.
I've started therapy and have made some progress. If I can become less anxious about money, I think I'll be able to find sustainable happiness. But I know this will be a lifetime struggle.
Love that you started therapy. Feel free to reach out to me (email in bio) if you want to chat about this in general.
Of course most people go through it the hard way (firing, divorce, etc...) But I don't suggest you do it now, but if you are not saving any significant money from your current job you might as well just leave.
The big takeaway for me was that expecting life to ring perfect based on my wisdom at 20 is pure silliness. I now know what I know, I can only go forward. So what gives me satisfaction and hope now. Then I (try to) execute on that.
I've also been having one for the past 3 years (the tail of my 20s), which I've been kinda labeling my "quarter life crisis" (which isn't really mathematically right but seems to align with popular usage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis)