The Roots of Midlife Crisis

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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)

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.