A mid-life crisis is an emotional state of doubt and anxiety in which a person becomes uncomfortable with the realization that life is halfway over. It commonly involves reflection on what the individual has done with his life up to that point, often with feelings that not enough was accomplished. The individual may feel boredom with their lives, jobs, or their partners, and may feel a strong desire to make changes in these areas. The condition is also called the beginning individuation, a process of self-actualization that continues on to death. The condition is most common in people in their 30s and 40s, and affects men more often than women.
Clearly, that definition needs some tweaking, but what do you think? Is this a useful term to an individual reflecting on his or her own life? Do you feel better or worse or different about your situation if someone characterizes it as a "midlife crisis"?
Here's something I wrote in the course of this little local debate I'm referring to:
I think the MLC is when you are married and living complacently and then you start taking risks violating conventions because you don't want to be that kind of person anymore. Once you're out of the marriage, the crisis is over. You're just adapting to new conditions in a normal way. Having problems and bad feelings is normal life, not a crisis.What do you think?
UPDATE: Terry Teachout takes "midlife crisis" to have a broader and more serious meaning than I do, which will please at least one participant in the local debate I've alluded to. I take the feeling he describes seriously, but I still don't like the term "mid-life crisis" for it. The term has an unserious tone to my ear, like the old "identity crisis." Teachout's concern is confronting the reality of death, however, and the person I have been debating with locally is chafing at the inadequacies and boredom of ordinary life. My local interlocutor wants to break out and change all sorts of things (but is not doing anything very unsual), and Teachout is talking about coming to terms with a reality that he has zero potential to change. The similarity is a feeling of wanting to live -- in some fuller way than seems currently available.
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Wikipedia's got it pretty well covered but the words, "hair plugs," "convertible," and "banging the baby-sitter" are conspicuously absent.
The Wikipedia's definition is terrible. It's all about "reflection" and some mental process -- not about acting out.
Roaring Tiger: It would sure be convenient if people's faces were this easy to read. Most people I know manage to keep a pleasant expression on their face, whatever might be going on inside. But then, I'm out here in the Midwest.
A midlife crisis is usually expressed as regular human assery. They only call it a midlife crisis if the person making an ass of himself is over a certain age.
Ann,
I think the midlife crisis was more common in earlier generations, where people grew up, got out of high school/college, married their school sweethearts, moved into a community, got a job/career and plugged away with everybody else for 20 years or so.
We all reach a point, though, where we realize that all those "I could.." thoughts become "I never will..." thoughts. If you've been reared in a highly conformist society, and gone along with the societal expectations ("Why did you have kids?" "It was what you did.."), this moment can be a bit hard to handle, especially if you don't really like your life all that much.
And, if the deep questioning of what you've been doing and what kind of life you have takes place during, say, the late 1960s and the 70s, you can cut loose pretty hard.
I've noticed that the people in my generation (college class of 1984) don't tend to have the "Midlife Crisis" in droves the way my parent's generation did. Sure, people get divorced, marriages break up, and men and women fool around, but the full blown cliche-type Midlife Crisis doesn't seem to happen all that much.
When a Porsche seems sexier than your spouse...I think you've hit that midlife crisis point.
I prefer "the geezer point," the moment in life you become an old geezer...some people are born that way, some never reach their geezer point. I think it's the moment you get crabby -- and like that!
When I was a teenager, a dear friend of our family left his wife of many years (a delightful person, by the way) and shortly after married a much younger woman who was a real b****, and by most objective standards pretty inferior to his former wife.
I well remember my parents discussing this between themselves and describing it as a "mid life crisis". It seemed to me such a stupid move on his part, not based on anything my parents said (although they clearly that too), but because I saw the "warts" so well described by Eddlep.
Jim: Much as I love my car, I am so far from crisis mode that it's funny.
Jim (the other one): I tend to think you just don't know what the inside of another person's marriage is really like. You never really know if it's good or bad and whether staying or leaving is the mistake.
Ann:
I am sure you are right about that. But I am also sure that most guys who made the mistake my family's friend made think the bermuda is greener than the kentucky blue grass when they haven't seen it in the winter yet.
In the case of that guy, when winter rolled around, the zoysia got brown and the second divorce came in quick order.
"What I really want": the true American Idol.
"When all that says 'It is good' has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains." - C.S. Lewis
I don't believe buying a sports car, or in my case a faster, aerobatic airplane, is a symptom of MLC. I think it's an indicator of progress along the income maturity S curve. After all, I've wanted this plane (or a sports car) since I was a pre-teen.
That said, these toys sure do help when you get the mid-life "I need a break from all this" blahs.
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