“ We wouldn’t be having this mid-life crisis crap if we were pioneers,” my friend announces. We laugh.
“No, we’d be too busy doing washing on a board, churning butter, shooting boars, and trying not to die,” I add.
We laugh as the truth of this sinks in. We simply have it too good, and forget that we do. When you are fighting for survival, like much of the world, you are too busy to worry about whether or not you are feeling truly fulfilled.
A wise friend pontificated:
“One day you wake up and realize the trajectory of your life has changed. In college and in your youth, you are dating lots of people, traveling, experiencing what the world has to offer. This first part of your life….everything is new and exciting. You make do with what you have, which isn’t much. It’s all up for grabs at this point.
Then, you meet the person you really want to be with, and you settle down. After a bit you have some kids. And suddenly, your life is actually your kids, it’s all about them. Your job is important now because you are feeding people. You find yourself stagnating, doing the same things all the time, not looking forward to what tomorrow brings because you know what it’s going to bring….”
At this point I stop him.
“I think the midlife crisis is more of a man thing, then, ‘cause I don’t really feel that way.” We laugh. I’m lying. I do feel that way, but in a different sense. For women, sometimes it has to do with the crystal ball, or lack thereof. We want to know, is it all going to pan out? We have perfect 20/20 vision of exactly where we might have screwed up in the past, a missed opportunity, a road not taken. This is especially pronounced when we are fighting with our significant other. “The ROAD” whatever it might be, pops into our heads, and we have to nudge the image away so we can properly form the argument we are having.
And he left something out. Guys really, most likely, in all honesty, wake up one day and have to clap a hand over their mouth so they don’t yell,
“I really want to sleep with other women! I’m getting older and my caveman genes are telling me to spread my seeds of love! But mostly I just want to see what its’ like!”
Instead, they get up and make some coffee, take a shower. Trudge on. Mostly they do that.
I was at a dinner party not long ago and a woman I’d just met started to tell me about her recent divorce. We’d had a fair bit of wine at this point, so all filters were off. He’d been a cad, she said, and she was finally finding happiness without him.
“What, was it hookers and cocaine?” I joked. Ha ha. Ha. Her face fell, only slightly, and I knew, not only that I was a total asshole for trying to joke with her about this, but that I’d nailed it.
“Yes,” she sighed. “And that was the worst thing. I told him, Did you have you be such a fucking cliché? I mean, really.”
I spit the foot from my mouth and tried to save the conversation. We focused on what she was doing now to get happy. It sounded fantastic. She’d hit the “reset” button! She was traveling, and having new experiences, and not sleeping with other people!
On both sides, what reigns supreme in the “mid-life crisis” is the sudden fallibility of our health, and the perceived loss of our youth. What used to be subtle markers (receding hairline, grey hairs, wrinkles, paunch) turn into rapidly impending issues (hair gone altogether, mostly grey hair, fissures in the face, massive paunch) and that’s just the physical.
The mental is another bag of cats altogether.
“Do I want to be making sandwiches for this slob forever? “
“Do I want to look at this woman let herself go for another 40 years?”
“Why don’t I have someone to fight with for the next 40 years?
“Does this job suck more or less than that job? Should I shelve it all and be a goat herder?”
“Should I have been a painter/neurosurgeon/science teacher?”
The list is of the “fill in the blank” variety.
We all have the crisis at some point, the catalysts varying by slight degrees. It’s part of being human. But if we have our health, we need to just get over ourselves. And by this I mean, me. I’d have killed myself in pioneering days, just to escape the washing. Life is goooooooood. Crisis abated, for at least 24 hours.