Never waste a midlife crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#71

Post by sanderjd » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 1:24 AM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #2

I wonder if the mid life crisis is a completely modern and secular malady. Thinking to my religious friends who have 5+ kids, a rich spiritual life and deep engagement with community, it's very hard to imagine them going through one. Because they are too busy, but mainly because their life is oriented from the get-go around what is very meaningful to them

For what it's worth, I don't think this is right. The "well, how did I get here?" problem can happen to anybody. Maybe it's not happening to your friends, but certainly there are many people like them who wake up some days wondering why they are struggling to find enough purpose and meaning in all those beautiful things they've built their lives around, and battling to envision their path back to contentment.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#72

Post by boringg » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 1:25 AM UTC

sircastor wrote: post #50

turnsout wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggle with this—if you have kids, sometimes staying the course feels like the "responsible" thing to do. But plenty of people get laid off out of the blue, and plenty of people pursue their dream and have a thriving second career. There is probably no right answer, but I guess the question is: "what decision can you live with?"

That’s tricky though, because the decision you can live with becomes the decision your partner and children also have to live with - and they get much less choice in the matter.

True but if you make a decision that makes you a bitter adult then they have to live with that as well - as a role model for your kids no less. No easy answers unfortunately.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#73

Post by boringg » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 1:28 AM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #2

I wonder if the mid life crisis is a completely modern and secular malady. Thinking to my religious friends who have 5+ kids, a rich spiritual life and deep engagement with community, it's very hard to imagine them going through one. Because they are too busy, but mainly because their life is oriented from the get-go around what is very meaningful to them

The U Curve probably correlates with midlife crises being that being at the low of the U curve with some other push triggers a crises. But yeah religiosity does correlate positively with happiness (no surprise there - you offload existential worries for religious dogma)

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.8376...

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#74

Post by grassmannian » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 1:29 AM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #3

xyzelement wrote: post #2

I wonder if the mid life crisis is a completely modern and secular malady. Thinking to my religious friends who have 5+ kids, a rich spiritual life and deep engagement with community, it's very hard to imagine them going through one. Because they are too busy, but mainly because their life is oriented from the get-go around what is very meaningful to them

> Thinking to my religious friends who have 5+ kids, a rich spiritual life and deep engagement with community, it's very hard to imagine them going through one. I grew up in a church and will tell you right off the bat that neither church nor family prevents one. Googling will give you no shortage of Christian articles and resources around dealing with them. Nobody is immune to that sense of "everything looks peachy…

Interestingly, it seems like some women's monastic communities (ostensibly the pinnacle of rich spiritual life and engagement with community) are much less likely to experience midlife crises, see https://www.jstor.org/stable/43682330 Figures 1 and 2.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#75

Post by flangola7 » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 1:29 AM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #19

version_five wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the circumstances you describe are what leads to the typical midlife crisis. Not always, but people wake up and realize they're trapped in a life (kids, obligations, job) that sort of crept up on them, and feel like they need to let off some steam. A lot of (perhaps including the article's authors) modern "mid-life crises" are more what I've heard of as "quarter life crises" - you finish school, get a job,…

There is this book https://www.amazon.com/Passages-Predictable-Crises-Adult-Lif... which factually points out that most people go through several crises in their adult life. As a rule of thumb you have one every seven years or so. I had one around 30, another in my early 40s, and another at 49. If you read between the lines in Freud you could also get the picture that a psychoanalysis would be likely to span the dura…

Divorce is often extremely healthy. It's not reasonable to characterize it as either.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#76

Post by postsantum » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 1:34 AM UTC

neilv wrote: post #38

sph wrote: post #27

Good advice, from a 36 year old middle aged man 3 years into a midlife crisis after a massive work-related burnout event. A couple more pieces of advice from me: * A midlife crisis has its own glacial pace. Be prepared to be upside down for a long time. * Be prepared not to be the same person you were before. Be prepared to learn there is no turning back. * If you're in a midlife crisis, your previous life was simply…

How close to Breaking Bad has it gotten?

Pryce and his new yellow Hummer

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#77

Post by OO000oo » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 1:45 AM UTC

sph wrote: post #27

Good advice, from a 36 year old middle aged man 3 years into a midlife crisis after a massive work-related burnout event. A couple more pieces of advice from me: * A midlife crisis has its own glacial pace. Be prepared to be upside down for a long time. * Be prepared not to be the same person you were before. Be prepared to learn there is no turning back. * If you're in a midlife crisis, your previous life was simply…

38 yo male now starting to think I don’t know what a midlife crisis is.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#78

Post by melenaboija » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 1:45 AM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #23

Midlife crisis needs to be split into the "responsible for kids" and "not" categories. The "not" people can do wilder/riskier things, although I suspect on average they don't since fear of things massively outweighs "can you actually do it" factors. Probably the paper boxes we build are smaller than the metal ones outside of them.

Midlife crisis needs to be split into “the ones that need to keep working until 70 probably doing the same crap to keep feeling alive” and “not”.

And sometimes the ones from “not” get there without ever knowing what _needing to work_ means.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#79

Post by andsoitis » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 1:46 AM UTC

OO000oo wrote: post #77

sph wrote: post #27

Good advice, from a 36 year old middle aged man 3 years into a midlife crisis after a massive work-related burnout event. A couple more pieces of advice from me: * A midlife crisis has its own glacial pace. Be prepared to be upside down for a long time. * Be prepared not to be the same person you were before. Be prepared to learn there is no turning back. * If you're in a midlife crisis, your previous life was simply…

38 yo male now starting to think I don’t know what a midlife crisis is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midlife_crisis

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#80

Post by jebarker » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 1:47 AM UTC

rcme wrote: post #70

jebarker wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ask those people whether they have the same desires in their old age as they did when they were younger? EDIT: my question comes across as combative and snarky. I honestly hope your strategy works out. Just for me the life I now enjoy in my 40s is not one I ever thought I'd want and it was a rough fews years getting over that.

I didn't take it as snarky. I could write a long essay on how I've used the experiences of those older than me to make decisions, but I'll spare you the diatribe. One strategy, though, is to ask people about their experiences. Do you mind sharing what was rough about those years in your 40s?

I had strong convictions about the things I would be doing and achieving in my 40s. The responsibilities that I actually had in my life were in direct conflict with that though. Initially I tried to do it all and just felt like a failure on all fronts. It wasn't until I accepted that I had way less control in life than I imagined that I was able to let go of the things I thought I should be doing and instead embrace and enjoy the things I needed to be doing.