A few years ago I came across a person who was going through mid life crisis. I followed his life closely and understood first hand what is is all about. I then thought, I would be careful when it comes to me or my husband as I am a more matured, psychologically evolved being :)
For some reason I always think I am a superior being as I understand life better than others. I guess everybody thinks the same way about themselves, but I live in my own bubble and I think very highly of myself and I am quite proud of that fact.
I read a little about what mid life crisis is all about. Here is what I found: "A midlife crisis is a transition of identity and self-confidence that can occur in early middle aged individuals."
The story of this guy who went through mid life crisis. He is a business man who is quite rich and successful. Well educated, very well settled, quite happy with this life. He is quite funny, retired quite early, and followed his passions. He started out to be a civil engineer, studied abroad, worked for 5years in US, went back home, got an idea in the field of construction, patented his idea and made money in the construction business. Retired before 40 and started acting in theater and writing pursuing his passions. Took acting lessons from LA living in India, being a christian played Indian mythological roles. Quite unique person indeed.
Later, I found out that his wife has Alzheimer's. He has a 13 year old son whom he takes care of completely, raises mostly by himself. He tries his best to find treatments for his wife. When asked, if he loves her so much, he said, "it was not love but sympathy towards her that made him stick to her. She has no where to go, what will she do if I leave her?" He says he has no future with her what so ever and has no hope that she will get any better but still he is married to her and is performing all his duties as a responsible husband. A one of a kind guy indeed!
He wrote about his mid life crisis. He bought a bike, joined a bike gang of four and drove around for sometime. He joined theater since he enjoys acting. He labelled all his actions as mid life crisis.
I, for some reason, never bought into the mid-life crisis concept. Now that I am going through my life (not quite there yet) but looking at my friends' lives who are in their 40-50s this is my understanding. Not all people go through mid life crisis. People who are successful, had a great career path, climbing up the success ladder, they will not complain about mid life crisis I think since they were so busy working towards their success and enjoying a rewarding career and family. Everything falls into place for them (of course because they are smart and work hard having a great perspective towards life)
On the other hand life sure gets super hectic during mid-life. You have your kids growing up, their teenage dramas to deal with, your parents aging, taking care of their health concerns, feeling even more stressed out mostly because of guilt, if you are away from them and cannot take care of them. And God forbid if you lose one of your parents it will multiply the stress 10 fold if not more. So what I see is most of it is stress built up because of multiple crises. Mid-life is the most stressful life I guess, again it depends on each person, because you are trying to juggle so many things, and even though you want to, you are not able to do a good job.
We all start our lives (I mean once we get a job and become independent) with an idea that we are going to lead our life a certain way. We will not make the same mistakes our parents, our older siblings, extended family, or friends did. We plan our future in a certain way. The mistake we do in planning is we consider each episode/responsibility/event separately.
We assume lot of things in a positive way like: my job, this is what I am going to do. This is my plan on my higher studies to support my career, training required etc etc. To be a successful parent, I am going to do all this, we will have a mental checklist which we keep updating looking at all the successful people around. This is how I am going to handle my teenage kids (even before you have any kids, judging the parents around you with teenage kids :). This is how I am going to take care of parents (in an ideal world). Once I save enough money, I am going to buy a bike, race car etc which was always my dream since I was 10.
Wishful thinking! The problem is life happens in parallel not in sequence. By the time you get a job and you are barely settled, you get married. Most of the Indians do at least . So now we are already looking at a wrinkle in the financial planning. Your higher studies get collided with having a baby and added responsibility. You are a brand new parent with no clue, even though you were very quick at passing judgements on every single parent we met. Do a Masters in the subject of your interest while raising a new born. Now that is fun! You don't get promoted because you did not work 17+ hours like your colleague who does not have kids or has lot of domestic help which gives him time to focus on his work. You are obviously depressed. You will think, let the kid be 3yrs old and potty trained then I will focus entirely on work. Then comes the second one. Sibling rivalry to deal with, so on and so forth. You get the idea.
Now all this is to a guy not a girl. I don't think many women have mid life crisis because they are smart :) They understand life and are practical in having unrealistic expectations from life. Because when the poor guy is going through all this and sometimes has the luxury to leave everything at least while he is away at work not thinking about what's going on in the house, a girl cannot afford that luxury. And when it is a working mom, those are the best. They need to be on steroids all day, all their life, until kids grow up to manage the day to day things that come up. Even statistics prove mid life crisis last about 3-10 years in men and 2-5 years in women and that approximately 10& of individuals go through this phase.
So what is the most commonly misnamed mid life crisis all about? According to me, it is not mid life crisis it is lack of planning, not taking all variables into account, assuming life happens sequentially, not in parallel. I think learning how to juggle might give some perspective on life, I am not kidding. If you don't want so much stress in your life, line up your priorities, don't try to excel at every single thing you do, give up certain things, no need to enroll your kids into a zillion classes etc etc.
Instead if you think you want to do everything, here is an idea. There is something called a wildly important goal (WIG) some corporations implement. Every week you mark one thing in your never ending list as wildly important. Mark it as a WIG that means you have to accomplish it no matter what. It is okay to slack on others but you will have to accomplish this one task. Focusing on one wildly important goal is like punching one finger through a sheet of paper - all your strength goes into making that hole. That way you distribute your work/responsibility load and can accomplish lot more than you think you can.
Now this is all for a normal person who has a great life without any hiccups, career advancement, kids growing up, parents getting old, childhood dreams of having a race car, motor bike, sky diving, not getting fulfilled, this is all normal. If you have a deep sense of regret that you did not accomplish anything in life, stop whining about it, and start somewhere. It is never too late.
Coming back to the guy we were talking about, his life is different. These people are outliers. They don't fall under the same category as normal people. When normal people get sucked up into day to day lives and complain they should pause and take a look at these people. They lead a different life. We need to learn from them, that if they are able to handle their lives in a sane manner then we have no right to complain.
For some reason I always think I am a superior being as I understand life better than others. I guess everybody thinks the same way about themselves, but I live in my own bubble and I think very highly of myself and I am quite proud of that fact.
I read a little about what mid life crisis is all about. Here is what I found: "A midlife crisis is a transition of identity and self-confidence that can occur in early middle aged individuals."
The story of this guy who went through mid life crisis. He is a business man who is quite rich and successful. Well educated, very well settled, quite happy with this life. He is quite funny, retired quite early, and followed his passions. He started out to be a civil engineer, studied abroad, worked for 5years in US, went back home, got an idea in the field of construction, patented his idea and made money in the construction business. Retired before 40 and started acting in theater and writing pursuing his passions. Took acting lessons from LA living in India, being a christian played Indian mythological roles. Quite unique person indeed.
Later, I found out that his wife has Alzheimer's. He has a 13 year old son whom he takes care of completely, raises mostly by himself. He tries his best to find treatments for his wife. When asked, if he loves her so much, he said, "it was not love but sympathy towards her that made him stick to her. She has no where to go, what will she do if I leave her?" He says he has no future with her what so ever and has no hope that she will get any better but still he is married to her and is performing all his duties as a responsible husband. A one of a kind guy indeed!
He wrote about his mid life crisis. He bought a bike, joined a bike gang of four and drove around for sometime. He joined theater since he enjoys acting. He labelled all his actions as mid life crisis.
I, for some reason, never bought into the mid-life crisis concept. Now that I am going through my life (not quite there yet) but looking at my friends' lives who are in their 40-50s this is my understanding. Not all people go through mid life crisis. People who are successful, had a great career path, climbing up the success ladder, they will not complain about mid life crisis I think since they were so busy working towards their success and enjoying a rewarding career and family. Everything falls into place for them (of course because they are smart and work hard having a great perspective towards life)
On the other hand life sure gets super hectic during mid-life. You have your kids growing up, their teenage dramas to deal with, your parents aging, taking care of their health concerns, feeling even more stressed out mostly because of guilt, if you are away from them and cannot take care of them. And God forbid if you lose one of your parents it will multiply the stress 10 fold if not more. So what I see is most of it is stress built up because of multiple crises. Mid-life is the most stressful life I guess, again it depends on each person, because you are trying to juggle so many things, and even though you want to, you are not able to do a good job.
We all start our lives (I mean once we get a job and become independent) with an idea that we are going to lead our life a certain way. We will not make the same mistakes our parents, our older siblings, extended family, or friends did. We plan our future in a certain way. The mistake we do in planning is we consider each episode/responsibility/event separately.
We assume lot of things in a positive way like: my job, this is what I am going to do. This is my plan on my higher studies to support my career, training required etc etc. To be a successful parent, I am going to do all this, we will have a mental checklist which we keep updating looking at all the successful people around. This is how I am going to handle my teenage kids (even before you have any kids, judging the parents around you with teenage kids :). This is how I am going to take care of parents (in an ideal world). Once I save enough money, I am going to buy a bike, race car etc which was always my dream since I was 10.
Wishful thinking! The problem is life happens in parallel not in sequence. By the time you get a job and you are barely settled, you get married. Most of the Indians do at least . So now we are already looking at a wrinkle in the financial planning. Your higher studies get collided with having a baby and added responsibility. You are a brand new parent with no clue, even though you were very quick at passing judgements on every single parent we met. Do a Masters in the subject of your interest while raising a new born. Now that is fun! You don't get promoted because you did not work 17+ hours like your colleague who does not have kids or has lot of domestic help which gives him time to focus on his work. You are obviously depressed. You will think, let the kid be 3yrs old and potty trained then I will focus entirely on work. Then comes the second one. Sibling rivalry to deal with, so on and so forth. You get the idea.
Now all this is to a guy not a girl. I don't think many women have mid life crisis because they are smart :) They understand life and are practical in having unrealistic expectations from life. Because when the poor guy is going through all this and sometimes has the luxury to leave everything at least while he is away at work not thinking about what's going on in the house, a girl cannot afford that luxury. And when it is a working mom, those are the best. They need to be on steroids all day, all their life, until kids grow up to manage the day to day things that come up. Even statistics prove mid life crisis last about 3-10 years in men and 2-5 years in women and that approximately 10& of individuals go through this phase.
So what is the most commonly misnamed mid life crisis all about? According to me, it is not mid life crisis it is lack of planning, not taking all variables into account, assuming life happens sequentially, not in parallel. I think learning how to juggle might give some perspective on life, I am not kidding. If you don't want so much stress in your life, line up your priorities, don't try to excel at every single thing you do, give up certain things, no need to enroll your kids into a zillion classes etc etc.
Instead if you think you want to do everything, here is an idea. There is something called a wildly important goal (WIG) some corporations implement. Every week you mark one thing in your never ending list as wildly important. Mark it as a WIG that means you have to accomplish it no matter what. It is okay to slack on others but you will have to accomplish this one task. Focusing on one wildly important goal is like punching one finger through a sheet of paper - all your strength goes into making that hole. That way you distribute your work/responsibility load and can accomplish lot more than you think you can.
Now this is all for a normal person who has a great life without any hiccups, career advancement, kids growing up, parents getting old, childhood dreams of having a race car, motor bike, sky diving, not getting fulfilled, this is all normal. If you have a deep sense of regret that you did not accomplish anything in life, stop whining about it, and start somewhere. It is never too late.
Coming back to the guy we were talking about, his life is different. These people are outliers. They don't fall under the same category as normal people. When normal people get sucked up into day to day lives and complain they should pause and take a look at these people. They lead a different life. We need to learn from them, that if they are able to handle their lives in a sane manner then we have no right to complain.
