Of course, at the same time, I was also reading how many academics believed midlife had no life stage monopoly on distress. So when I turned 40 in 2000, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the midlife crisis was real or an illusion.
Recently, I stumbled upon a newly-published working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study surveyed 500,000 people and presented new evidence that “midlife is a time when people disproportionately take their own lives, have trouble sleeping, are clinically depressed, spend time thinking about suicide, feel life is not worth living, find it hard to concentrate, forget things, feel overwhelmed in their workplace, suffer from disabling headaches and become dependent on alcohol.” Ouch!
The authors write that “the seriousness of this societal problem has not been grasped by the affluent world’s policymakers.” They go on to say that it’s “paradoxical and troubling” that middle-aged people in wealthy nations are experiencing mental health woes when they “are close to their peak earnings, have typically experienced little or no illness, reside in some of the safest countries in the world and live in the most prosperous era in human history.”
So, what’s going on? In many of my past Wisdom Well posts, I’ve surmised that midlife can be more of a “chrysalis” or “calling” than a “crisis” as it is a time when a significant internal transition is brewing. However, just like adolescence was a period of emotional, physical, hormonal, and identity transition, middlescence is a transformational era often accompanied by random life circumstances that make you feel like you’re in an emotional headlock.
Of course, the big difference between the two is that society provides all kinds of support for the teenager going through these changes. At the same time, the midlifer enters this period of life alone and without fanfare. Quite often, they silently feel like they’re getting the game of life wrong, so they “fake normal” (as our MEA alum and faculty member Elizabeth White suggests).
Here are my three suggestions for how to tame the crisis and feed the curiosity when it comes to midlife:
1. Add punctuation to your life. Midlife is a marathon as it might stretch from 35-75 as more of us are becoming centenarians. There are currently almost no rites of passage or socially-supported rituals during this era. It’s just one long, boring, run-on sentence. The late academic Mary Catherine Bateson suggested we all could use a “midlife atrium” as a time and place to create spaciousness to reflect upon how to live the second half of our lives. Of course, it’s reassuring to do this in a like-minded community where you realize what you’re going through is normal. This is part of the reason we created MEA. As one of our recent grads suggested, “My midlife is now defined by BMEA (“Before MEA”) and AMEN (“After Moden Elder Nourishment”). Amen to that!
2. Become a beginner. One of my favorite ice-breaking first questions to someone I’ve just met at a cocktail party is, “In what parts of your life are you a beginner?” Assuming you can create a little space in your life (and, if you can’t, let MEA teach you to do your “Great Midlife Edit”), this is the time when you can test out some of the “new” things you’ve been delaying. You can take meaningful steps that will improve the rest of your life while you still have physical, mental, and financial capacities. This is your opportunity to move out of the crisis mode and into the kick-ass mode. You’ll be relieved by how liberating it feels to be a neophyte again.
3. Unlock your purpose by grokking your life narrative. Many of us are reciting from the “success script” inherited from our parents or community. We’re an actor in a play, NOT of our making. That’s why you often feel that midlife rebellious streak—you’re tired of doing what you’re told. For some, that translates into a midlife crisis reaction (sports car, affair/divorce, new belief system), but this can be somewhat selfish and often limiting. Instead, consider asking yourself how you might view your life as a series of clues to help you unlock your purpose. Michelangelo was able to see David in that hunk of rock, and, with some life-changing prompts, you might be able to decipher a throughline for why you’re here on earth. As Mark Twain said, “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born, and the day you find out why.” Often, we find our calling during a time that feels like a crisis.