We all have images of what a midlife crisis looks like.
We often picture someone in their 40s or 50s waking up one day, looking at their lives and feeling some sense of anxiety or panic or sadness:
Perhaps they are having trouble reconciling the image of themselves in their heads with the one they see in the mirror.
They might be struggling with feelings of insignificance, or a sudden realization of how much time has passed and comparatively how little time is ahead.
They may be facing a change in their career or relationship that is triggering a sense of urgency.
They may be coming to terms with their mortality and the reality of their eventual nonexistence.
We often humorously imagine a person in such a crisis reactively looking for ways to soothe these nagging emotional pangs: making major impulse purchases or drastically changing how they dress or look, perhaps seeking out all sorts of methods in an effort to recapture a younger version of themselves. We usually focus on the exterior manifestations of these internal disturbances, as if they are strictly appearance related.
But, ultimately, a midlife crisis is an identity and/or an existential crisis.
It’s trying to ascribe meaning to this beautifully messy journey: to wrestle with the mysteries of how we got here and where we’re going and to feel a sense of peace about it all. It is a confluence of moral, spiritual, intellectual wrestling that leaves us asking, “What is my life and does it matter?”
In other words, we are all in the throes of a midlife crisis right now whether we want to be or not.
With no guarantee of how long we’re here, we are all in the middle of living—and the questions of meaning, purpose, significance, belonging, and legacy swirl around us constantly. Some of us are more naturally wired to cultivate these questions and engage them: relishing the big questions and actively confronting them, while others of us avoid them; pushing them aside as best they can and looking for diversions and distractions.
But eventually, when we experience aging, illness, relational difficulty, and disappointment, we all face the whys and hows of being human.
No matter how old we are, today is a perfect day to ask how we are doing living a day we’ve never been to in the middle of a life we never asked for.
That’s something universally true about this life: none of us have been here before. More than that, we didn’t choose to be here. Our human journey is perhaps unique among most of life in our sense of self, our sense of time, and our ability to choose—yet we began without any of those things or little awareness or control of them.
Not a single human being ever had the chance to consent to their existence beforehand or to have a say in the circumstances in which they showed up: their family and home and origin story. By the time we were cognizant of our own existence a great deal had already been decided for us and we had already been altered by time and people.
Last week, I was doing some post-holiday sale shopping (and as a writer I was people-watching and eavesdropping as well). A father and his young son walked past me on the way to the shoe section, and I could hear the man low-key berating his son: speaking with a quiet but steady stream of condescension about his displeasure at having to buy new shoes for the boy, commenting on the young man’s posture and countenance, to the point that I started getting uncomfortable and regretting listening in. But I kept listening. The boy was just being subjected to a barrage of criticism. From where I was standing, it all just felt unnecessarily cruel.
All I could think of us was: “Hey, your son didn’t ask to be born. He just found himself here and as (presumably) one of the people responsible for his being here (and a voice that is one of the loudest in his head in shaping his sense of self and safety), maybe you could be kinder to him.”
I wanted to step in and actually gently say these things to the man but realized it might not be received well and well, you never know whose packin’ heat in the mean streets of the kids’ clothing area of a big box store—and I wasn’t feeling like making a trip to the hospital this early in the new year.
So, I said nothing.
I kind of regret it.
I thought a lot about the boy.
But then I thought about the man.
I realized that he too didn’t ask to be here. He may have begun his story with a similar voice of condemnation in his head and he might have been shaped by words spoken to him by someone whose presence in his life was large. That’s not excusing what seemed in the isolated moment and from a distance like an excessively punitive manner toward a child, but acknowledging that he is in the middle of a sprawling and complex story which I know nothing about and which began without his consent.
Then I looked around at every person around me in the aisles and checkout lines and parking lot: we all just showed up here and as old as we get, we’re still some form of a scared child doing the best to navigate this place and usually feeling like we’re getting it all spectacularly wrong.
We’re all doing our best to finish well a story we didn’t start. As people who gather to look at this life thoughtfully, it’s important to realize how in crisis we all are.
I think our sense of empathy is largely related to our ability to remember the universal parts of being human: the fear, the grief, the losses, the tragedies that we are exposed to and continually trying to make sense of. It is in recognizing that our time here is finite and that this reality is as heavy for everyone else as it is for us.You didn’t have a choice to be here and you don’t have the choice whether you will leave or not, which leaves today: you, midlife. What choices will define you?
I think all our crises come down to the issue of time: of what we will do with what we have left. And we need to be ruthless with time.The greatest question we might ask today and on any given day is, “Is this worthy of my time?”
Holding on to this grudge? Is it worthy of my time?Mindlessly slot machining on social media? Not speaking out on something that matters to me? Is the silence worthy of my time?Postponing a long-shelved dream?Listening to the voices of condemnation and criticism in my head? Is it worthy of my time?
If I know that I will be here for a finite number of years or even minutes, what is and isn’t useful to me?
The best response to a midlife crisis is not procrastinating away what is essential.Today is a day that has never existed, and regardless of how old we are we're all here having a completely unique and unprecedented experience of being human. This is a joy and an honor and a challenge. The challenge being, how to, in the middle of learning and falling and failing and trying to take on the unique pressures of each day, to remember that we will not have an endless supply of them.Today, whatever crises you are in the middle in, may you live with the awareness of the brevity of life and live as wisely and joyfully as you can.
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