
The Roots of Midlife Crisis - evilsimon
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-real-roots-of-midlife-crisis/382235/?single_page=true
======
johngalt
A midlife crisis is simply when all your 'someday' bills are due. Someday I'll
go back to school and get my masters, someday I will move to X place I'd
prefer to live at, someday I will visit my old friends or relative, someday I
will take the time to spend with my kids. All the things you promise yourself
to get through the workday.

Then in the span of about 5 years, those options all close at once. Too old to
meaningfully start over in a different career, roots down in the area you
live, the relative you always meant to talk to now has dementia, you long ago
missed the chance to read one last bed time story to your kids.

Someday never happens. Guard against desire. Don't make promises to yourself
you can't keep.

~~~
DennisP
That's partly it. Sometimes another part is that you find yourself with the
ability to do those things you wanted to do someday.

I always feel a bit sorry for guys in this age bracket who buy expensive
sports cars, only to hear everybody call it a midlife crisis. Maybe they
wanted a car like that since they were 18, and just couldn't afford it until
now.

Personally I'm 48 and just resigned from my comfortable, well-paying job to
spend a year on my own trying to build my own variation of Xanadu. Maybe it's
a midlife crisis. But it's something I've wanted to do for over a decade, and
I didn't feel financially comfortable doing it until now.

But at the same time, in the back of my mind I'm also thinking that if I don't
do it soon, I won't ever do it, and I'll always wonder what might have been.

There's an alternative to guarding against desire because someday never
happens, and that's to make it happen. Read that bedtime story, talk to that
relative, get that masters, do that startup.

~~~
judk
Buying expensive toys is adults acting like spoiled children.

------
guylhem
TLDR : "the age U-shape in life satisfaction is driven by unmet aspirations
that are painfully felt during midlife but beneficially abandoned and felt
with less regret during old age"

Basically, most people hope they will do great, but instead fail miserably in
their expectations and finally even let go of the hope.

Thoreau said 'Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave
with the song still in them.'. Apparently, this is wrong, as this would
suggest even the song leaves them.

They live a life of quiet despair, then forget their dreams and - boom -
happiness! Ignorance must really be bliss.

As another commenter said, "Basically "midlife crisis" is a way for people who
are married with families to put down anyone having more fun or experiencing
more freedom than them."

Agreed. I plan to have fun without encombering myself with things that would
reduce my freedom (and I'm sure a lot of people will hate that and say that's
not responsible, etc)

Doing without kids will be a good start, so that the life/energy/money is
invested on my projects intead of another biologically related person.

EDIT: I'm not bitter, I just want to avoid a potential problem by making
adjustments. I would consider giving up on my hopes and my dreams a much more
serious issue that trying to adapt myself to a problem

~~~
projectileboy
FWIW, I'm married with three kids and I really like my wife and kids. I
certainly don't think it's for everyone, but I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand
on the assumption that everyone who has a family is miserable (although I
admit I may be an outlier...?). I say this only because you might deprive
yourself of something you may enjoy.

~~~
heygiraffe
I believe studies have generally shown married men, on the whole, to be
happier than unmarried men. I'm not sure about women, nor about how children
affect things.

Regardless, you are not an outlier. Huge numbers of people with families are
happy about it. It's fashionable for men in their 20s to talk about marriage
entirely in terms of loss of freedom, but that doesn't mean their ideas are in
accord with reality.

~~~
Retra
They still get married, don't they?

------
rdtsc
I think there is an element in there about realizing ones mortality and
vulnerability. In younger years there is a mentality of "I have an infinite
amount of time left" and I can do whatever I want.

Later in years, a realization of one's mortality (an emotional/personal one,
not just a theoretical understanding). Coupled with signs of an ageing body --
fractures take longer to heal, chronic diseases start to poke their head, etc.

~~~
mturmon
I agree, and I'd like to follow up on finitude.

No matter how successful you are, how much you figured out what you wanted and
how well you did it -- there will be something within the sphere you've
committed to that is left untried. Eventually it sinks in that some of those
somethings will always be left undone. There will be no time for them. This
feels like a loss, and letting go is hard.

One other side to this, even within our chosen area(s) of interest that we
have worked hard on: Unless we are very unimaginative, we all ultimately must
fail, despite many successes. As this sinks in, letting go is hard.

~~~
csommers
On the flip-side, I find that "letting go" aspect to be somewhat...freeing.

Being able to acknowledge that there are things you won't be able to address
in this lifetime is reassuring to me, as it allows me to focus more on the
things that "immediately" matter.

~~~
mturmon
Definitely. Time can be merciful, despite its usual appearance.

------
michaelchisari
_' Cause before you know it, it's done. Nothin' but babies and memories. You
hear me? Babies and memories. Smile, sweetheart. Give us a smile. Say "Mojo."
Say "Mojo."_ \- Friday Night Lights

I wonder how much of the concept of a "Mid-Life Crisis" is based on economic
stability. You used to be able to get out of high school, get a good union
factory job, get married, have kids, buy a house, all before you were 30.
Then, at some point, you have some kind of existential question of whether
having followed the script was the right thing to do. The whole counter-
culture of the 60's and literature like Revolutionary Road approach this idea.

Nowadays, though, you come out with a Masters degree, and work retail. You
switch jobs four times in two years. You don't get married until you're 35, if
ever. You have kids, maybe. You see much more of the world, whether through
the internet, or necessity.

It would seem, if there's any sort of crisis these days, it's about realizing
that you'll never have the kind of stability and predictability that the
generations that experienced a midlife crisis had en masse.

~~~
dgacmu
Nah - that's why it's interesting that the article focused on a tenured
professor. Speaking as one of the same, I can confirm: Stability does not
equate to subjective perception of happiness. I know a lot of profs who've
_left_ guaranteed, stable, tenured jobs to run off to industry within a few
years of getting tenure. (Ok, so they all went to a startup or to Google, but
still: They gave up security with a very reasonable, if not industry-
equivalent, income.)

~~~
Retra
I've had some problems with security in happiness: I generally feel like that
security is just idling -- that the stuff I _really_ want to do if being
inhibited by the drudgery I have to do to have security.

I don't want a stable job unless it feels like an adventure and we make
_progress_, not products. That's a feeling I get out of school, not out of
work.

------
dominotw
Articles on 'happiness' are a staple on HN. We see Western fixations – such as
obsessive individualism, technological fanaticism, and economic intoxication –
as the height of human progress. Analyze everything with the scientific method
regardless of the problem at hand( Mapping happiness to curves and parabolas.
really?).

We have tuned our minds into advanced scientific grooves but have an
underdeveloped psychological mind unable to grasp its own misery. Its like
riding on chariot drawn by mismatched horses.

~~~
mikeash
What's wrong with applying the scientific method to happiness? It's the best
technique available for figuring stuff out. Do you have a better idea?

~~~
cdoxsey
It's the paradox of happiness. Pursuing happiness as your goal in life is the
one sure-fire way never to achieve it.

More than that, the cold, calculating, statistical logic of a utilitarian
hedonism that you see so much of in a "scientific" approach to happiness,
fails to account of the difference between kinds of happiness: Is it better to
be a pig satisfied or a Socrates dissatisfied?

Scientism is what transforms a beautiful piece of music into lifeless
vibration frequencies. There's more to reality than what a mere scientific
description can tell you.

~~~
mikeash
That sounds like a load to me. Pursuing happiness is often a good way to
achieve it. There's no reason science can't account for different kinds of
happiness, nor is there any reason science can't account for the beauty of
music.

------
b_emery
Being in my early 40's a lot of this article resonates with my thinking as it
was a few months ago. The piling up of setbacks, aches, the 'is this all there
is?'. One day, I was on the porch, trying to wrestle my kids into the car, and
a neighbor, in his 80's, health conditions (who was walking laps around the
neighborhood for exercise), asked me how I was doing. I said 'surviving'.

"Surviving?" he said, "you're _living!_ " with a raised fist.

Seeing myself through the eyes of someone much closer to the end has given me
some very valuable perspective. Sometimes I think of myself as an 80 yr old
man, and think about what it will be like. Makes me pretty damn glad to be
alive now, and pretty appreciative of what I _do_ have. Crisis averted.

------
kelukelugames
Turned 31 a few days ago. Hair has been falling out steadily, when does it
stop?

~~~
christiangenco
When it's gone.

------
fizixer
Okay I haven't read the article but I don't need to. I can tell you in pure
and simple terms what midlife crisis is:

It's the time when we confront, what I like to call, the reality of biology.

That it's all downhill from that point onwards no matter what we do. Every
birthday is in reality a 'sadder' birthday instead of a happy one, although we
never put it that way because for us first-world denizens, political
correctness is the utmost virtue. It's our "all the king's men" moment! All
your riches, your amazing family and friends, your lifetime of successes are
sooner or later going down the drain for you and there's no way out. And this
is after you already had gotten used to the idea that you're not "young"
anymore, a realization for which you paid a heavy emotional and psychological
price and then told yourself "it's going to be fine from now on".

And some of the typical reactions to the crisis are easily explained away if
you think this way. Either you conclude about the meaninglessness of it all
and become irresposible in one way or another, socially, maybe in terms of
health, etc. Or you submit yourself to it and start thinking of yourself as "a
coach for the next generation", for your children, for the youth around you,
what have you.

However there is a kind of reaction that almost no one adopts. And it's
encapsulated well by Dylan Thomas's poem, 'do not go gentle into the good
night; rage, rage against the dying of the light'.

Essentially the problem with the submissive approach is, it's too much of a
coincidence that we get used to the idea as soon as it hits us. We realize we
lost our youth, and we get used to the idea. Then we realize that sooner or
later we're going to loose our existence, and we again get used to the idea.

(A nice video related to the ideas I've expressed:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb-
OYmHVchQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb-OYmHVchQ))

So what is this "third" reaction?

It's the realization that biology is a scaffolding on top of the physics of
reality. Biology does not dictate everything. Physics does. And if there is
something that physics allows but biology doesn't, something can be done about
it.

Luckily we're living in the second decade of the twenty first century. Much of
what I say might not have made sense a hundred years ago, much less a thousand
years ago. But we're here, now. And now is exciting and full of promise. The
revolution of genetics, rejuvenation biotechnology, and nanotechnology, is
opening new doors everyday, and as a result, blinding us to the glare of
possibilities.

Except that most people find it off-putting. And that's where the coincidence
I mentioned above plays its role. To a very good approximation, the whole
world's population can easily be divided into two kinds; the ones who are
(psychologically) unaware of their existential bummer, and the ones who are
aware but are completely okay with it (because they got used to the idea
almost at the moment it struck them). And when you try to shake them up, try
to awaken them from their deep slumber of submissiveness, they feel offended.
They feel being dragged out of their comfort zone without their will. And they
end up resisting whatever you say, even when it might be in their best
interest to support you.

I don't know how to conclude this comment but I'd say this, we're living in a
very empowering era as of now (2014). We could choose to give one strong push
as humanity and get rid of many of the shackles of biology. Or we could choose
to prefer tradition and conservation and live many more decades with the idea
that the reason the way things are is because it's natural, and because it's
best, and because it's the way it's meant to be.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
Perhaps you should read the article, for it offers not only a better
explanation of the "dip" in the 40s but for the subsequent increase in
satisfaction/contentment/happiness that then lasts until near the very end of
life.

It's a long article. I have no summary. Other than "period of adjustment to
changing values, none of which are related to mortality".

------
chrismealy
Are there any countries that don't have a u curve? Is this just an American
thing?

------
ilaksh
Basically "midlife crisis" is a way for people who are married with families
to put down anyone having more fun or experiencing more freedom than them.

~~~
byEngineer
I'm married with family. It is something else: You need to turn yourself into
a corporate-or-other slave to pay off the mortgage, cars, save for kids'
schools, etc.

Absolutely no wonder that in "poor" countries they are happier. Living in
constant stress about the job, with huge financial obligation, not even seeing
your kids and spouse except for weekends and a week vacation a year -- compare
this to my parents generation in communistic (then) Poland -- no debt,
guaranteed jobs, free housing. Economically speaking yes this doesn't make
sense. Psychologically - why they are looking (in the article above) in all
the wrong places for explanations when it is so obvious.

~~~
sliverstorm
_compare this to my parents generation in communistic (then) Poland -- no
debt, guaranteed jobs, free housing._

Do your parents tell you how much they miss that? My parents aren't from
Soviet-era Poland, but I've _never_ heard a citizen of the Soviet Bloc wax
nostalgic about their time there.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Do your parents tell you how much they miss that? My parents aren't from
> Soviet-era Poland, but I've never heard a citizen of the Soviet Bloc wax
> nostalgic about their time there.

I've heard of (but not heard myself) _lots_ of people in post-Soviet Russia
doing so, and its been frequently cited as the basis for support for many of
the most powerful politicians in Russia since shortly after the fall of the
Soviet Union.

