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Are Mid-Life Crises Inevitable?

I began my new year (the 7th one writing this blog!) with the unexpected treat of dinner with two friends I’ve known since I was 12 years old. In truth, they are the only friends I’ve known since I was 12. But I know I’m lucky to still have something in common and keep in touch with even two. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, but as is the case with really good, long-term friends, it was as if we’d walked out of the room yesterday, and walked back in today … having stepped through some weird time-machine that left us essentially the same, but added age to our features overnight.

Life friends are a special treasure, for many reasons. For starters, they can offer a valuable historical archive of your life. Talk to someone who’s known you forever about some irksome question like why you picked such a difficult road in life, and they can give you feedback like, “But don’t you remember? Even when you were 14, you said what you really wanted to do was explore the world.” Suddenly you remember, and it all makes more sense.

But conversations with friends who’ve paced you over a lifetime also tend to have a longer arc and view. We know the span of each other’s childhoods, youthful struggles, marriages, children, and middle age. We can see the changes; have heard about the challenges. We’ve seen how different choices and roads have panned out in each other’s lives. Not quite the same thing as getting to live three different versions of your own life, but a glimpse, at least, down paths not taken … or taken ahead of you.

If you’re lucky, all those years and paths will also lead to some collective wisdom that’s kind of fun to share, as you reflect on how it differs from what you thought when you were just starting out in life. (In quick order, for example, the three of us had agreed on four immutable laws regarding helping others: You can’t 1) make someone else happy, 2) get them a job, 3) get them to change, or 4) get them to take more ownership of a choice or event than they’re willing to do. Of course, as one of my friends pointed out, also on the list of things that don’t work … is telling someone that those above-mentioned things don’t work. We had a good laugh over that one.)

But in the course of our conversation, we also pondered whether the proverbial “mid-life crisis” is unavoidable, as you reach an age when you realize that you won’t live forever, not everyone has a happy ending, and a number of roads you felt as if you could take, back when everything seemed possible, are now closed to you. And that question touches on issues very relevant to this blog.

My own take on the question is this: I think most of us, when our parents decline and it hits us that we’re next over the cliff, struggle with some kind of existential panic, although panic is probably too strong a word. How we cope with that “yikes!” moment, however, has a lot to do with what we’ve done up until then.

If we’ve focused more on doing what we thought others expected of us, or what would get us status, money, or other “extrinsic” rewards (see my previous post on extrinsic vs. intrinsic rewards), or if we took a safe, predictable road instead of doing what we really wanted to do as we moved through our young and middle-adult years, there’s often a “Wait! It’s MY turn!!” response. In both men and women, this can lead to rather extreme actions, like dumping spouses, abruptly quitting jobs, having wild flings, making extravagant purchases, and other stereotypical “mid-life crisis” stuff – generally in search of reclaiming whatever we feel we missed out on, along the way.

Not that a mid-life shift or change is always bad. Sometimes that “Yikes!” moment is a long-overdue wake-up call to get back on a happier or more fulfilling track, while we still have time.

But the key cause of a “crisis” is realizing that something’s actually wrong with where you are, where you’ve been, and/or where you’re headed. If, instead, you’ve spent time working on finding your authentic voice and self, and then finding a way to have that authentic voice reflected in and nurtured by your job, activities, and friends/partners  … there’s a lot less to regret or panic about, when you realize that time isn’t infinite, and a lot of paths are now closed to you. “Regrets,” as the philosopher Joseph Campbell once wrote, “are illuminations come too late.”

There is always going to be a curiosity about how paths not taken might have worked out, and even a bit of fantasy indulgence about all the great  … (fill in the blank: sex, fame, money, travel, meals, excitement, adventure) … we imagine we might have had, if we’d made different choices in life. If I look back on my own life, one of the biggest watershed turns in the road, where my life might have turned out completely differently had I gone right instead of left, came down to the fact that my worldly goods were buried in the front of a very full moving van, at 3 in the morning, instead of being more easily accessible in the back.

It’s a long story, but the bottom line is, if I’d unloaded all my furniture and boxes that night, I would have ended up in New York, working on documentaries, instead of learning to fly in Louisville, Kentucky. Would that path have made me happier? I have no way of knowing. But the key that keeps me from panicking or obsessing over that lost opportunity is that the path I ended up on ended up being a fulfilling and happy one, as well. Maybe that other one would have been just as happy, or even happier. But I can let it go, because where I am is ok.

The reason I am working on a book about the power and importance of an authentic voice (and I’ll be writing more about that here, this coming year), is that the more I delve into the adventure of seeking meaningful, worthwhile and happy personal and professional paths in life, the more I realize that everything else derives from having that clear and vibrant knowledge, at the core. Everything from being able to grab hold of life with two hands, embracing adventure, and finding or feeling passion for a pursuit, to inspiring and contributing our best to a work team, finding a group sense of mission, and making the tough decisions that make businesses ethical and successful, families healthy, and lives sane and balanced. Not to mention gaining greater power to impact the world, the strength to endure the hits and losses of life, and the ability to let go of the paths not taken, or the doors now closed.

More on this to come, as we head into the new year!

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