In Defense of the Mid-Life Crisis
Transitions that are Emotionally-Difficult (and Probably Necessary)
In general, I think we use the word “crisis” too much, especially politically. Everything, apparently, is a crisis. There is crisis right now in the Middle East. There is the ever-present global warming crisis. Our own democracy is in crisis. Economic crisis, always looming. And god knows Covid-19 was a crisis.
Now some of these are more of a crisis than others, but of course the problem with throwing the word in the middle of every current event is that we become numb to it. “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” write large. Truthfully, this is some of why I got off of Twitter, which I have written about some previously.
And yet, as it relates to the “mid-life crisis,” I actually sort of like the word, feel it is appropriate, mostly because it is one of the few words that gets at the kind of terror that can be associated with this psychological transition. As you you note the word “transition” as one alternative to crisis, I’ll admit that I’m borrowing the reframing from Arthur Brooks’ book, From Strength to Strength. Brooks seems to prefer transition as a way to think about mid-life turmoil, and some of the work of his book is to articulate a way into that transition (professionally, anyway) that isn’t divorcing your wife, moving to the Caribbean, or buying a sports car.
It seems wise to explore other paths for what to do with your angst, but I’m also not ready to totally discount all extreme acts by people in their forties or fifties. I mean, some marriages probably are too far gone. Sometimes one partner is probably doing the work and the other isn’t. Or any other number of possibilities.
Just this week I noticed a news clip about a book that’s coming out from Shannon Harris, the former wife of Joshua. Joshua wrote the 1997 book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, which became something of an icon of Evangelical “purity culture” around dating, marriage, and sex. The two have since divorced, and apparently Shannon’s book is about finding her voice apart from the seemingly-coerced identity of “Christian wife.” Now let’s say the two hadn’t divorced—Joshua, too, has renounced his own book at this point and may not even consider himself a Christian anymore—and tried to navigate this transition together. I could only imagine how much blame would get thrown at each other as they tried to get to the heart of why they took on this “performance” so intensely, and how in the world to become themselves again after trying it on for so long. This is only one example, but the reality is that there are no shortage of cultural, religious, and political phenomena that we can place in the center of our identity as a kind-of fill-in or even cover-up for who we are or the lack of certainty we feel in general. And then, one day, it becomes no longer tenable, and the process can feel a lot like, well, death.
Someone told me a few days ago that I am “not old enough” to have a mid-life crisis. Hmm. My guess is that what he meant is that I am not yet in my forties and nor do I have a marriage to discard or kids to abandon. I suppose he’s right about all of that, but if we do the math, an average lifespan seems to be between the ages of 70 and 80, and of course some of us will not make it that far (Matthew Perry, i.e. most notably Chandler on the late 1990s and early 2000s hit sitcom, Friends, just died suddenly at the age of 54), or some of us will, but with our body crawling to the finish. I'm 39 now, and while I reserve the right to have another crisis at 45 or 52 or however many crises I need to have, yeah, I think I'm old enough.
It is in this sense that I always watch and sort of roll my eyes at Gary Vaynerchuk clips in which he is pleading with twenties, thirties, forties, even fifties types to believe that they “have so much time!” to accomplish what they want to in life. I mean, maybe they do, or maybe they don’t. None of us are guaranteed another minute. And so, some of what the mid-life “crisis” surely is is an awareness of that, an ‘Oh shit, I’m not going to last forever, and life is kind of short, and mine seems to be passing me by.’ There is an urgency in that, hence the big changes that some people decide to make. Maybe he needed the motorcycle to feel alive again, damnit.
As I think about what has constituted this transition for me, I’d say the two-ish years of extreme discomfort I’ve experienced was by a number of circumstances that have converged one after the other. There was a dating relationship I wanted that didn’t work out. Before that, there was Covid-19 and its pandemic, seemingly blocking most of the good parts of the life I had built in my thirties. There was turning 38 and knowing that surely means I am undeniably “late thirties” and therefore (in my own internal logic) no longer young. There were two straight job changes that did not turn out to be great long-term fits and the overwhelming feeling that I am way behind most of peers professionally. There was a bit of a professional break altogether as I sort out what I want to do next from the options that do exist around me. There was the totaling of a car that I loved and the subsequent $5,000 hit to replace it. There was, in general, several months of sliding financially after about seven years of progress in that area of my life and the fear of squandering it altogether. There was leaving sports officiating, and thus my last active involvement in competitive athletics, behind because my left knee just cannot do it anymore (‘Am I just a few years away from a wheelchair?’). There was the loosening, if not altogether leaving behind my beverage vices of soda, alcohol, and coffee. There was admitting that while my father is alive and of good physical health, he has almost no active presence in my life, and that is what he has chosen. And there was lots unleashing angry accusations at God or Nature or Whomever Put Me Here.
In my material reality, of course, I am “okay”: my bank account has money it, my car has been replaced, I have not missed any meals. And yet, it has certainly not felt like it, and that, I think, is the real crisis or transition here, not any external changes that result from it. The crisis is navigating through the emotional turmoil, trying to listen and learn from it it even as you resent its presence in your head in the first place.
One friend of mine who has witnessed a good bit of this process in me told me that Brene Brown—who’s initial Ted Talk I liked and was influenced by several years ago—said something like that mid-life crises are really “awakenings.” I think I’ve also seen her say that some of the work of the mid-life crises is to recognize the survival “armor” that you took on at whatever age and learning to take off this armor that no longer suits you. The first part, what my friend told me, may or may not be true, but it made me want to vomit. It struck me as an attempt to turn this all into some sort of virtuous struggle (maybe it is, who knows) rather than the survival necessity that it definitely is, whether we like it or not. We can choose to avoid by taking on more vices if we wish, but that isn’t likely to solve our real problems. And so, the void it is.
As for the observation about taking on and discarding armor, that may or may not be true, too, but it seems to me that either way it underestimates the existential dilemma involved for anyone who tries to do the work Brown suggests. ‘So I learned to protect myself from people or actions in certain ways that were harmful to me, but it turns out those survival mechanisms are actually a blocker to thriving in adult life, and so now I get to get rid of what I know and face the emptiness and missed life that those mechanisms created? And if I’m lucky, I have forty more years, thirty of which might involve some relative health, to produce something different?’ That doesn’t seem like a very good deal. Certainly not one I would have chosen.
And then, if you’re anything like me, you start looking around at everything that surrounds you and deciding it’s all meaningless. What is the point of all this anyway?! And you become the middle-aged cynic, but of course the cynicism isn’t tenable either.
And so you try to quiet down some of the voices, try not to let your anxiety speak and act for you, try to suspend judgement for a while. Put one foot in front of the other. Take on the mundane tasks, while asking yourself, "‘Who and what do I still love at this point?’ Turns out, there are still a few. And then you try to whittle life down to that.