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Never waste a midlife crisis

austinkleon.com

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Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#101

Post by Lamad123 »

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…

Yes, you can almost say that St. Augustine and Luther and others were having some sort of quarter/mid-life crises.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#102

Post by xyzelement »

Loocid wrote: post #6
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

Isn't the stereotypical midlife crisis the Dad whose kids have all moved out? I don't think that has anything to do with modernity or secularity, it's more to do with a large change that triggers a revaluation of your life. That could happen to anyone.

// the Dad whose kids have all moved out

I think that too is a modern and secular thing. If you got 5 kids there's a good chance the older one has made you a grandfather while the younger ones are still at home. So you sort of transition from meaning to meaning

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#103

Post by [deleted] »

flangola7 wrote: post #75
PaulHoule wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#104

Post by kaitai »

sdwr wrote: post #93
PaulHoule wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the experience of most people is "dark matter" Love this, maps really well onto my experience. I see (and feel) a sharp deliniation between do-ers and be-ers, with the be-ers wishing they could do, and the do-ers not having time to process what they're doing. > for ordinary people and their families it's profoundly harmful People want (and believe they deserve) what they used to have, or what they see someone else…

"I think the crux of the midlife crisis is coming to terms with tradeoffs. Everyone has spent potential to get where they are, and there aren't do-overs." done" or you think "I only have (x) years left, it's too late already." But either way, the crux of the matter is that you have a limited set of choices left. You had a limited set of choices before, too, but young people don't realize that. They don't quite feel the chapters being ripped out of the book of life yet, they don't see the just-pruned branches falling from the tree of life... Every affirmative choice you make is also a choice that kills something else. And this is not bad, necessarily -- a well-pruned fruit tree yields more fruit, without breaking. But it's not how we've been raised. We've been raised with limitlessness. We have not been raised with the interior disciplines of pruning and weeding and culling.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#106

Post by xyzelement »

Barrin92 wrote: post #12
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

>it's very hard to imagine them going through one because they've outsourced most critical decisions to their faith. As Jung said, people don't have ideas, ideas have people. It's very easy to obtain meaning by getting in a sense hijacked by a very convincing set of beliefs.

I agree with the "ideas have people" framing.

If you are choosing a set of ideas to "he had by" - ones that let you navigate life (eg bypassing the midlife crisis) sound good.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#107

Post by xyzelement »

kgwxd wrote: post #59
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

[flagged]

That doesn't sound like a person with actual religion.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#108

Post by hirvi74 »

version_five wrote: post #5
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

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,…

> I'd planned professionally at about 30 and then realized it wasn't what I wanted and had no idea what to do next.

Oddly enough, I think this is what keeps me from being ambitious in a professional sense. I just feel like, based on everything I read, hear, and see, that we are all just donkeys chasing the metaphorical carrot tied to a stick. I swear, it's like the hedonistic treadmill is turned up a few notches too high.

There is just so much social pressure to jump into the rat race. I mean, part of me wants to be more ambitious -- to really see how far my abilities and efforts can take me.

However, if I have learned one thing in life it is that everything has a cost. So, what if I do accomplish whatever career goals I set out to achieve? I think a lot of the ambition that comes and goes in my head originates not out of a desire to fulfill my own wants but to kind of self-medicate some deep rooted self-esteem issues/feelings of inadequacy.

What do you all think?

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#109

Post by FeteCommuniste »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #25
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

[flagged]

What a load of crap. Many of us haven’t been to church in decades yet still are in loving marriages with kids, not frowning and “all alone.” If there’s resentment it’s in part an effect of this stupid insistence that only religious “solutions” can lead to happiness.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#110

Post by nytesky »

Midlife crisis is about recognizing your mortality and limited time left, and looking at what you have done and finding it comes up short to what you hoped for your life.

The reality of how little time you have left is a key component, that death is stalking every decision and will likely curtail some plans.

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