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
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, you're in a rut where you don't have an obvious next step and you're starting at possible decades of the same, you get depressed. But now a lot of people are like 35 at that time so it almost overlaps with the 80's version of a midlife crisis. This happened to me, I accomplished roughly what I'd planned professionally at about 30 and then realized it wasn't what I wanted and had no idea what to do next.
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 duration of such a crisis (say 18 months) and improve the outcome you get.
The author, Gail Sheehy, gave a talk at Ithaca College about a decade ago and actually said that she disowned that book for a few reasons:
(1) Passages is positive for divorce as a way that people who are evolving at different rates and in different directions to realize themselves. She realized later on that divorce is overall highly destructive.
(2) The paths that people take aren't quite so predictable.
(3) Passages was based on a study of graduates of an elite school, one thing that stands out is that none of the case studies consider serious deprivation, in fact you never once hear that somebody wanted to do X or Y but didn't because they couldn't afford it. In the sense that the experience of most people is "dark matter" you might want to read
https://www.amazon.com/Silences-Tillie-Olsen/dp/1558614400
In particular divorce might work out well for somebody like Bill Gates or Elon Musk who can trade in their tired old nag for a hot young thing but for most ordinary people and their families it's profoundly harmful.
Sheehy went on to write numerous more books on the same subject.
https://www.freepsychotherapybooks.org/ebook/wisdom-of-the-e...
it doesn't deal with the "voicelesness" of the "working class" (closer to the British idea of "working class" than the Marxist one, notably "working class" people in Britain frequently aren't working) but that voicelessness is a defining characteristic of that group. Anyone who finds a voice has left that class and can't really speak for it.
Most people are ruined financially by it. If you are a pro baseball player or Hollywood actor you can afford to lose half your wealth and support two households. People in the bottom 80% can’t afford it.
That's terrifying. I haven't recovered from the crisis 5 years ago. Not ready for another.
> In particular divorce might work out well for somebody like Bill Gates or Elon Musk who can trade in their tired old nag for a hot young thing
That just sounds sad. How lonely do you have to be before it makes sense to trade in your closest companion for eye candy?
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 has. 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.
Mid-life crisis examples of how this desire shows up as regret: "What if I had stayed with that previous girlfriend instead of marrying my wife?", "What if I had moved to this other city instead of my home?", etc.
My personal conclusion is that this limitless desire is a dark pit of despair with no bottom. This may be part of the reasoning behind the tenth commandment seems to be applicable - "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."
That desire can be toxic to the point of destruction is mostly treated as a foreign concept to our contemporary world.
So, I made the conscious choice to go in the other direction toward the light, and to see what adventure awaits over there.
Not sure fully what that means yet, but a part of it at least is accepting and embracing my own life as it is today, including all of the constraints.
It seems to me like the path out of the mid-life crisis is about signing up for the next adventure, letting go of the past, and looking forward to what's still to come. And most definitely not letting "desire for else" ruin my gratitude for the fact that I am highly fortunate, and still quite able to live, experience, do, and be so much.
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?
My two cents, I deeply agree that "everything has a cost" but I don't find that most unambitious people make a conscious trade off.
Most unambitious people I know aren't doing anything with the time and energy they are "saving". They are just kinda passing/wasting it on things that don't satisfy them deeply.
That's different than someone making a conscious decision (eg not taking the most demanding job in order to have time w the family)
The other thing unambitious people often miss is that working hardcore can be fun and energizing in its own right and it can develop you as a person holistically.
I don't think many ambitious people work hard despite hating it every second. I think they rather enjoy it and benefit from it (similar to someone who likes exercise). At least that's been my experience and perception.
This notion that you should be grinding for some sort of passion or satisfaction isn't as real as people make it out to be. Some of the most depressed, broken people you meet are highly passionate professionals, celebrities, and artists who found deep satisfaction in their jobs.
When it comes down to it, mental health things are more complicated than chasing you 'passion', whatever that means.
In my experience the happiest and most stable people I know are financially secure. Not hard workers, not working on some magnum opus. Just plain well-off. One is a stay at home dad who hasn't worked a day since he married his wife at 24. Great guy. He isn't posting on hackernews about life hacks and bragging about the grind. He just golfs and raises his kids and winks when I make fun of him for it.
The guy you mentioned who's busy raising his kids is doing the most important and meaningful work he can possibly be doing. It doesn't have to be a grind to be meaningful. It just needs to be meaningful...
This isn't the same as the archetype I referred to in my post - a guy who's not ambitious but also is not doing anything meaningful or enjoyable with his time and energy (which is very different from your friend)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes%20...
It's hard to discern motivations, but I always like to pray on if what I'm doing is by faith and is loving. Against those things there is no law. At the end of the day, the only thing gained or lost here is eternal, and I'm not going to the grave with any of the earthly accumulations or losses. So most of the "counting the cost" needs to be in the spiritual domain.
I'm still not happy but at least I know I'd rather have money and be sad than also being worried about money on top of that. I definitely need to get back some semblance of meaning in my life, but at 34 now (without kids) and still feeling like I'm 25 because my perception of time is warped by attention deficit.. I feel like the only years I care about are soon to be over (under 40).
The further I get from my childhood the less I want to be here.
Something that is less analogical and more biographical: we are primates chasing and arguing over the shiniest and new type of banana. The analogical part left is what the "banana" might be.
As primates, we are unbelievably ill-equipped to handle the Internet. This dream of the Internet connecting us together turned into the nightmare it is because it taps into our primitive emotions, which ends up being most of them.
If they work for you, great.
I just gave an observation. If one wanted to do something with that observation, then I think it's fair to say that we should design our technology with the limitations of our emotional intelligence in mind. We cannot keep assuming that our emotional intelligence is infinite and can absorb everything we throw at it. Our emotional capacity is limited, and so we should acknowledge that and design our systems with that in mind. But, we don't.
By the way, nihilism is a valid approach as a philosophy and has several important things to say. It is not what it is commonly understood to be.
Your job should serve your purposes. Once it stops doing that, something has to change or you’re going to be unhappy.
The curse of midlife is being able to see the need and justification for bullshit like the rat race, knowing full well you perpetuate it in your own small way by participating, while also becoming cognizant that there’s more to life than empty status signaling. You see the extent to which people self-medicate to keep themselves in the race, and the sheer number of people who simply disengage in some way because they can’t deal with it.
The only way forward is through.
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 on the outside, internally there's a lot of frustration" with the status quo. It does give you a big blast radius so your midlife crisis can wreck a family or two, though, if it leads you towards certain things.
As an ex-church person: the "community" is pretty hurtful to a lot of people and isn't immune to high school clique / cult of personality type things, even if you discount other obvious harms (the experience of gay kids in church, women being told they can't teach, way-too-frequent abuses of adolescents by church authorities like youth pastors and priests).
Christian stuff in particular is also heavy on the shame and that is pretty bad for psychological safety & wellness. My mother in law was a divorcee and made to feel real bad about that even to this day. As a boy I remember growing up and self-flagellating for every "impure" thought that crossed my mind. "Rich spiritual life" is a pretty branding phrase for bankrupt ideology.
East Asian cultures are more about the shame. And try not to go anywhere where the social order is based on Fear.
Honestly, seeing some catholic families with 5+ kids, the model where one partner simply spends all time in work and hobbies while leaving all childcare to the other one is super common too.
> There are church communities that are welcoming to people that are divorced, gay, etc
There are plenty of church communities that _claim_ to be welcoming to such folks. You don't have to stick around long to see that it's not true. And it's also not hard to see why - the underlying foundations of the Christian church especially are rotten. Churches don't have full control of their congregants so churches will never be safe spaces as long as they teach from texts that are racist, sexist, and encourage illogical thinking. I _did_ church shop for a year in hip San Francisco of all places, before coming to this (obvious in hindsight) realization. TBT that time I walked into a church and the first thing they said was "Women were created to be mens' helper" - a panel with Francis Chan. Walked out pretty fast after that.
> I'd advocate, don't give up, don't dismiss religion based on people's failings, but instead, challenge people
What does that mean -- challenge people? You're encouraging folks like me to put up with endless bullshit and look for something that doesn't exist. No thanks.
You don't need "better Christians" -- you need people to stop being Christians.
> Also there's a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about what teachings are, what Jesus really said, a misunderstanding that God is somehow punitive or vengeful which Jesus tried to clear up but we still seem to fall victim to.
That your religion is this incoherent is itself a huge problem and the source of many ills.
> I agree with you about churches perpetuating problematic power structures, clericalism and so forth.. But that in itself is people's failings isn't it? Doesn't mean that all or even many Christians are supportive of that.
You're saying blame the priest who diddled kids, not the church that teaches priests to repress their natural urges until they manifest in taking advantage of defenseless children. You're saying blame the idiots who "misinterpreted" the Bible and created churches where women cannot lead, and not the texts that provide the argument for their behavior. That's not agreeing with me on problematic power structures, that's failing to see problematic power structures.
> Treatment of women - often women are not treated well , whether in the church or not. Shouldn't be happening.. but again human failings rather than something fundamental about religion or church per se, IMHO.
Except that the basis for western oppression for women is largely rooted in Judeo-Christian beliefs. And in the middle east, Islam is the source.
It's all garbage.
Isn't the common denominator of a midlife crisis a yearning for the past? Overwhelming nostalgia? Dad buying a sports car so he can pretend to be 20 and virile again? Mom downing the mimosas at 10AM wishing she didn't make so many mistakes in the past? Uncle Joe can't stop talking about how he was High School senior football captain and had the time of his life in the '70s and that everything sucks now?
Me, on the other hand? I'd never want to go back to my 30s or 20s and especially my teenage years. High School was literally the worst part of my life, I'm talking rock bottom, and my 20s were not much better. But every year thereafter has been better than the previous one. I'm totally optimistic about the future! And while I might not be making more money year after year, I always feel like I have a purpose to achieve, and as my kid grows up, there always seems like there are future moments to look forward to. None of this requires religion.
I don't think so. I'd describe a midlife crisis as more of a fear you don't have enough time to do what's next. I've always wanted a Ferrari; if I don't get it now, when will I? I discovered bouldering in my 40's and hate the fact that I can never be competitive; if only I had started 20 years earlier... at this point, every year limits how much time I have left for those new adventures I haven't discovered yet.
I think Uncle Joe just complains because he's crabby.
So you see that car you have always wanted but never bought because it's impractical and expensive and say to yourself, "I don't need four seats any more, and I do have the money if I'm careful. Why not? I've always wanted it."
Of course some folks do this irresponsibly, but it doesn't have to be a fantasy about pretending to be something you used to be. Just now you can, when before you couldn't.
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
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a dark forest
For the straightforward path had been lost. A man wakes up in a strange room
He doesn't recognize the woman next to him
He gets out of bed, there's a wallet on the dresser
He opens it up, looks inside at the driver's license in there with his face on it
And someone else's nameThey did have very good food at the family reunions, and a big family, but that's about the limit of positive characteristics I can enumerate. (Not that everyone was bad, a few cousins managed to join the modern world of loving-kindness and science).
I think what's been lost in places is that living an outwardly religious life is one thing[0], while being deeply religious inwardly is the next level. The second thing is harder to teach or even talk about so it gets ignored, vs ritual etc.
It's maybe the same as the difference between "dragging yourself to the gym"[0] and "loving fitness."
//And many of them struggle with meaning in life - the community, religion and kids don't solve that.
This seems like the crux of the difference between deep and superficial engagement with religion. In my experience, a deeply religious person (of any religion) sees a profound amount of connectivity and meaning in everything in the universe, and sees their family and community life in the context of contributing to that meaning. The statement you made is analogous to me to "working out doesn't make you fitter" - it puts a big question mark around the exercise you're doing.
[0] While obviously connecting deeply is the goal, there's a lot of benefit to even the less deep engagement. Your friends whom you describe as bitter - you can imagine that the secular society is full of bitterness too, plus no community or kids. Likewise, even if you "drag yourself to the gym" you're way ahead of those who don't, even though you may hate it.
The traditional expectation is that your kids move out to be married and bless you with grandchildren, not to abandon you to rot.
In the end, for them the point still stands that their own kids are adults now, and while grandchildren are fun to take care of, they aren't typically the same amount of responsibility on grandparents as on parents. It still leads to suddenly having time to think about their own life, as well as the freedom to take risks, creating the same room for a crisis.
"Thinking about" probably won't do them much good. Seeing them on a regular basis, on the other hand, has great effects on many grandparents. Obviously, this requires that children don't move far away from parents, but many family-oriented parents stay close.
> a rich spiritual life and deep engagement with community
I kind of suspect this is one of the ways mid-life crisis manifests. That, and covert alcoholism.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.8376...
Buying a porsche gt3 and a nice house with a swimming pool won't make up for wasting 20+ yours of your life behind a desk
A community does not prevent them. A spiritual life definitely doesn’t prevent them (disillusionment is frequently a cause). Kids don’t help, but they certainly put immense pressure on you to not upend everything so it gives the appearance that it might not be happening to outsiders.
So much great literature and philosophy was written specifically because religious people went through crises of faith where they re-interpreted their entire social/religious world. Kierkegaard being one most people know.
Same thing, different name.
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.
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.
Everyone is doing their best, but each of us have our own blind spots. Best to work as a team so we can cover each other's shortcomings.
As someone who grew up in a religious family/community, this comment made me burst out laughing.
People in those lives often do the opposite, imagining being unencumbered or living some kind of cosmopolitan life.
It’s pretty normal to imagine “elsewhere” when you are unhappy. “Elsewhere” is by definition not where you are.
As far as I can tell angst is normal for human beings and everyone in every lifestyle feels it.
The hint is in the name - crisis.
I genuinely think it's a point people reach where they realize (or finally admit to themselves) that what they've been doing with their lives up until this point is deeply unsatisfying, so they make drastic changes.
Our "modern" western life is not fulfilling, healthy or enjoyable.
Who is "our"? Western countries, especially Anglo countries, are comprised of a thousand thousand different cultures. Which among those are unfulfilling, unenjoyable, unhealthy? I'm sure some are nice. We're not all the same, not remotely.
I was thinking of the one where we go to jobs for 40+ hours a week that are not fulfilling, we don't get to spend much time with our families, we don't get time to sleep and exercise enough... and we have to do it for essentially our entire lives in the hopes we'll get a few years to be put out to pasture
I have found it extremely fulfilling to work for my own needs - building houses, hunting my own food, growing my own vegetables. Doing so takes 20-30 hours per week, and the rest of the time I get to spend with my friends and family.
Obviously it's not for everyone, but I'm saying that people get into a mid life "crisis" because they realize what they've been doing isn't making them happy deep down.
I don't think I'm financially independent in the sense that most people use that phrase. I certainly don't have enough money that I can just sit around all day every day even for 6 months. I would have no food and no heat and would die.
I have to work, but it's working directly for my own survival, not working for a boss to earn money to buy my survival.
Personally speaking, Islam has helped me and many others I have either personally observed or heard about navigate far from ideal circumstances. I've known people who have lost spouses, children, or even entire close families, yet they remain steadfast and strong.
How good/trustworthy is the data on suicides in those countries? Highly religious countries are not keen on showing and sharing unfavourable data.
Sources are World Health Organization (Suicide Rates 2019) and World Health Statistics (World Health Organization)