Why do people often have a ‘mid-life crisis,’ and is it just a fancy way of saying they’ve hit a point where they finally realize they’ve been doing everything wrong?
In: Other
It’s not about doing anything wrong. A Mid-life crisis is more about finally really FEELING your age and much more importantly, your Mortality.
All throughout life you have moments where you really realize “fuck, a few more spins of the globe and I’m dead and then it’s nothingness forever…” or you contemplate “what if I die tomorrow”
But as a young person, the death still feels so far away. You are young, and bulletproof, and you are good.
By middle age, your life is at best half over. You are on the downslope of aging, and for most people “middle age” is more like 2/3 of the way through life or 3/4 through…. You realize your best years are behind you in your physical and youthful sense.
Also, by middle age, most people have made all the major decisions that “lock” them into the life they currently live. They have a marriage, have kids or don’t, probably are locked into a mortgage, locked into their career (or at least it’s very costly to change). This feeling of your past choices caging you is a big aspect.
So that true reckoning with your impending death and that you are on the downslope, plus that *THIS* is ultimately your life and you are unlikely to make major changes in the future… this reality smacks people in the face.
It seems to hit hardest during the mid-life crisis, but there are several of these. People in their mid 20s tend to also have an existential crisis, once they are out of school and fully adults and realize life is hard work and there is no longer any set “path” like there was as a kid with schooling… that hits people hard too.
So it’s an existential crisis, at its core. And most people handle it with grace. The dude buys a corvette because he always wanted a dope car as a kid but couldn’t afford one, but now is older and can but he isn’t going to waste his future on an expensive car so he gets the cheaper high performance of the vette. Drives that around to feel something, to “accomplish” something new. The gal takes up some niche hobby out of nowhere and consumes her life with it a bit, as it’s novel and feels good to say “see? Im not dying, im still expanding my horizons” these are the good examples.
The bad mid-life crises are the ones where people blow up their perfectly good life because of their internal philosophical struggles. The guy takes his vette and drives over to a young lady’s spot and cheats and then his marriage completely blows up, they all move and sell the family home and kids are uprooted and devastated… lady abandons the family and runs off to the Caribbean to become a beach bum, or whatever else.
Everyone will face existential crises. It’s a fact, unless your mental capacity is so low that you can’t even contemplate your life and mortality. But most people just buy the vette and move on. They do some small gestures, come to terms with reality, and keep on building the life they worked hard for. But many people also go the destructive route.
Latest Answers