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?
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It’s when you realize that statistically you’re closer to death than you are to birth which de facto means your time is over half way up. And that hits people on an existential level.
When people grow up, they think they can do anything and be anything. Part of being young is feeling like you have all the time in the world.
“Mid-life crisis” is when that feeling goes away. It’s called a “crisis” because suddenly, people can start feeling like they can’t do all the things they wanted after all, and that their time is running out.
It doesn’t even matter if they “did everything right” – they still feel sad when they realize for real that it’s all going away one day.
Hey, you asked.
Have you ever gotten the “Sunday scaries” where on a Sunday you realize that the weekend is almost over, tomorrow you’ll have work (or school) again and you dread it? You may feel you need to make the absolute most out of the few hours of weekend that you have left.
A midlife crisis is kind of like that. You realize that you have a finite amount of time left in your life and then you panic and try to make the absolute most out of the time you have left. It doesn’t even have to be about fearing death, but simply realizing that the time for certain activities may be running out, like sports or really long traveling that just gets harder and harder as you get older.
It doesn’t mean they realize they did something wrong, it just means they think they need to “seize the day”, and may end up trying to cram a lot of experiences in a small amount of time before it’s too late.
I once read a thing saying ‘don’t call it a mid life crisis, call it ‘realising you can decide what you really want out of life’ ‘ and I thought that was an interesting perspective.
It’s a point in life when you realise that you’re not young anymore. In fact you’ll be old pretty soon. You start to feel and notice changes in your body. It’s scary to get old. You have to face your mortality.
It can be tough to accept, so some people try to desperately cling to youth.
It’s often becoming aware of one’s own mortality and a sense that they haven’t lived their life as fully as they could have and feeling a need to make up for “lost” time.
It’s why people having midlife crises will often spend frivolously on luxury goods or recklessly engage in behaviors like adultery, drug use, dangerous activities etc.
They feel as though they don’t have much time left and so the consequences don’t feel as real or important.
You change from doing what others think you should do (which you believe in) to figuring out for yourself what you really want to do.
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.
I’m 33. I haven’t had it yet, but i know it’s when you feel like your younger life that you felt had so much opportunities becomes a life where you feel you are running out of time.
I wouldn’t say “did wrong.” Probably for most people it’s a feeling that they’re at the last point of their life where they can make big changes, before it becomes impossible/ridiculous, even if – maybe especially if – you’d always done the “right’ things. You went into IT out of college because it seemed more practical or lucrative than being a pastry chef or whatever. You married the person who seemed “safe” when you were 26, or felt like you’d never do any better. You always bought sensible sedans that got good gas mileage, never the muscle car you loved when you were 16. You live in a quiet city with reasonable cost of living, and never got to tend bar in a beach town. Whatever.
Problem isn’t deciding to go after those things; it’s when people do them in an impulsive, irresponsible way that hurts others.
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