Midlife Mastery Journal

How to Deal with Slowin' Down

I've said this before in public, and so I might as well repeat it: I'm a huge wuss when it comes to not feeling well. I've heard women complain that men don't do sickness well, and when I hear that, I silently have to agree — at least in the case of this one man. My mind generally travels just shy of warp speed, but when something's amiss in some other bodily segment, everything above the neckline goes into extreme hibernation. It would take me most of the day to tie my shoes (if I ever wore any). Now that I've been navigating the midlife transition a while, when that happens, I can't help wondering what the future will hold.

Before you get all panicky about losing your youthful 'edge', I want you to take a few minutes to consider what 'slowing down' means for us middle-aged folks (sorry . . . you're reading this, so I have to assume . . . ). Much of it isn't what you might fear that it may be. Of course, the physical slowing down can be chalked up to nothing more than a physiological fact: as we age, our human growth hormone (HGH) levels decrease. That old pituitary gland just ain't what she used to be. The result is that your ROI (return on investment) for your exercise regimen steadily decreases through time. You work harder for the same (or even fewer) results. That doesn't mean that you can't run the steeplechase at 90. You can, if you continuously train for it, and if you don't cause yourself some other permanent injury. Of course, with lower HGH, even non-permanent injuries take longer to heal.

How Deep Will Your Midlife Crisis Go?

I was determined not to have a midlife crisis. I had one. The scary part of it all was that the results lasted over a period of about 20 years. By 'results', I mean there were unresolved issues that hung on for that length of time. That's one of the most uncomfortable aspects of a midlife crisis: you're never really in charge of how — or, in my case, when — they're going to turn out. Not all crises turn out to have this degree of uncertainty about them: I remember the last relationship break-up I went through, for example. Once I heard the bad news, I gave myself permission to grieve uncontrollably for one week. After that, I knew I had to get back to the business of keeping my life on track. Tragedies are only train wrecks when we permit them to be.

The difference between the suffering experienced in a personal tragedy (like the end of a relationship or the death of a loved one) and the long-term effects of a midlife crisis consists in the difference in the depth of the inner disorientation that you experience in one as compared with the other. The death of a relationship may certainly shake your trust in the predictability of outcomes in life, or in how you interpret the will of God for you, or even in your ability to weather such storms. Yet, the quiet desperation that accompanies a midlife crisis actually strikes much deeper: it goes to the core of of your self-esteem and your ability to have confidence in the soundness of your own decision-making. There may be less outward 'weeping and gnashing of teeth' involved in the experience of a midlife crisis, but, particularly in this case, 'still waters run deep.'

What If I Get Sick?

This is my first day back in my home office since I left on my Vancouver trip last week. In the meantime, something unpleasant happened to me: some kind of nasty, lingering stomach virus that has left me wanting to do nothing more than just sleep. Getting sick is one of life's most unpleasant experiences; although, from time to time it happens to us all. Once we approach midlife, however, life's annoyances seem to take on a much more sinister air: we can't help wondering if each downturn may not be just another harbinger of worse things to come.

Don't you need to be concerned about such things? Doesn't life get that much more difficult once you've begun that midlife transition? Aren't you headed 'over the hill'? Shouldn't you be out shopping for a nursing home and a casket? The good news is that you only need to be composing your eulogy if you get particular enjoyment out of doing these things. There are, indeed, many things that you could worry about: including health care, finances, retirement options, and so on; but these are things that you should have been concerned with all along! Nothing has changed!

What Will Your Transition Cost?

On paper, it seems obvious that people should plan for a major shift in perspective that should occur just about the time they settle in to their relationships, their careers and their sense of personal achievement and well=being. That's all very fine to speculate about before the fact. Yet, a huge problem arises around the question of midlife because a) you don't know what you don't know and b) the criteria that you use to evaluate your life before midlife are made obsolete by it. Midlife involves not only a paradigm shift, but a values shift, as well, and that's what makes planning for it such a difficult assignment. Consider this: what good does it do you to calculate carefully the cost of driving your car (gas, maintenance, insurance, etc.) when you suddenly decide you want to sell it and ride a bicycle to work every day?

Right now, you're planning and directing your future based on your specific life vision: in most cases, it's something that's been with you a very long time. That vision has been meticulously constructed over the course of your lifetime (up until now) and it provides you with an invaluable context in which you can live your life. From your vision, you derive a sense of purpose and direction, as well as your sense of what matters to you and what doesn't. The 'crisis' of midlife comes upon you when, for a variety of reasons, that vision no longer speaks to you. You find yourself in the situation where all those things that used to matter most to you now don't matter at all and things that you never even considered now appear as the most important things in your life.

Climbing Out of the Fog

It’s impossible to plan for or even prepare for the midlife transition without doing some serious self-work. You can’t very well establish a path and direction for yourself without having at least a vague idea of where you are and where you want to go. You’ll find it even more challenging to position yourself to face the eventualities along your way, if the way itself remains obscure.

Have you ever been driving and run into the vicinity of a serious brush fire? That’s an experience you’ll want to avoid at all costs. A cloud of smoke lying across the road looks superficially just like the wispy boarders of a fog bank. It appears as innocent as a touch of morning mist. Yet, as soon as you’ve driven past its boarders, you’ll find yourself in serious trouble.

More Than Muddling Through

Unpleasant surprises don't necessarily have to be a necessary part of the process of midlife transition. 'Shock and awe' may have have some usefulness in military operations, but they clearly don't belong in a well-managed life. Although it's impossible to predict all the eventualities of midlife with 100% accuracy (as it's similarly impossible to make those predictions for the other two stages of life: childhood or adulthood), many aspects of what may be confronting us are 'out there' for us to become aware of (and knowledgeable about). "It happens to everybody" doesn't have to be a statement of capitulation; it can also serve a wellspring of wisdom for those who're willing to consider the facts carefully.

Is there anyone who doesn't know the legendary symptoms of a 'midlife crisis'? There's a stale primary relationship that's often accompanied with a sense of alienation or disinterest with things at home. There's 'straying' and 'experimenting' apart from a man's life partner. There's a striving to achieve a new 'look' — a new hairstyle (or color), new (and younger-looking) outfit, or the iconic red Corvette. At the same time, there are all they new 'toys' and interests, with or without the mushrooming credit card debt. Of course, there's job burnout, impulsive job change, or 'dropping out' of a stable career in favor of something a lot riskier. In fact, taking risks (more of them, and more severe) can serve as an excellent symptom of the onset of the midlife crisis.

Emotional Pain Management

Rest assured that, even though physical ailments like arthritis begin making their appearance during midlife, the pain I'm talking about here isn't (necessarily) a physical one. Although emotional pain has many similarities with its physical cousin, there are also some differences: most particularly, emotional pain tends to be much more predictable. When you're trying to understand the causes for the onset of emotional pain, it's very important to keep in mind the function of pain in general — and emotional pain in particular.

Pain functions as a warning signal for the organism. In itself, there's nothing 'bad' about pain (except, of course, that it hurts). In fact, if you weren't able to experience pain, you'd be in deep trouble. For example, one of the signs of a sociopathic personality is the incapacity to feel [the pain of] guilt. Their behavior can be entirely random, self-serving and anti-social at least in part because they experience no emotional consequences. So therefore, pain remains a very necessary (and good) experience. Unless you're more of a masochist than I'd like to address here, chances are very good that, at the moment you're about to give the bed leg a good kick with your bare foot, you're not conscious of what's coming. On the contrary, as you're entering (or about to enter) midlife, you can pick up some very good indications regarding what you're about to encounter. Not all pain is necessary: wouldn't you like to spare yourself some of it?

Midlife Dispells the Security Mirage

I'm very fond of the concept of 'social security', regardless of whether or not any social insurance program (either for retirement or medical necessities) could provide 'security'. At some point in our personal evolution, I hope that we'd reach the point where we'd realize the truth about 'security'; we'd save ourselves a lot of trouble and disappointment if we'd only come to the realization that security remains a wonderful childhood fantasy along with the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny and Santa Claus (sorry for the spoiler, kids).

Although I know that we gain a tremendous amount of comfort from believing in these things, serious problems arise when (as inevitably happens), we're confronted with the stark reality of the unforeseen. Chaos theory reigns! Murphy has the upper hand! "What can go wrong, will go wrong." Or, if you'd rather, "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley." In the mirages of childhood (that continue in an unbroken chain through adulthood), catastrophe happens only rarely and, on those rare occasions when it does, it only happens to other people. Work hard, pay attention to your spouse and kids, eat right, exercise and get plenty of rest, and you'll be OK, no matter what.

Do Fewer Women Have Midlife Crises?

I'm 're-pairing' my midlife survey. No, it's not broken. Let's just say that the first time through taught me a great deal about what worked and what didn't work; also, what was valuable information and what information I was missing. Silly me: just because I wanted to focus on guys going through midlife transitions, I offered the survey only to them. I hadn't planned on offering the survey a second time, but now I realize two things: 1) I want to have many, many more responses and 2) I want responses from women, too. The (rather obvious) reason behind my choice derives from my sense that fewer women experience midlife crisis than their male counterparts. However, without some real data to back that up, it remains just an anecdotal and logical assumption. So I'm re-preparing (re-pairing?) my survey.

Although I'll be very careful not to allow my suspicions to influence the questions I ask and the way I ask the questions, I want to be very up-front with you about them. I will be very interested to see whether or not the data (scientific or not) support my experience. I suspect — alright: I believe — that the infamous midlife crisis is a product of our particularly western culture. I also believe that the closer one's culture comes to the North American version, the more severe the midlife crisis is apt to be for the male (if not for the female) of our species. Let me share my suspicions with you.

What Is Midlife, After All?

The preliminary results are in from my (very) unscientific survey of 175 men of random ages. It was particularly unscientific because I had only a 16% response rate from my population sample. As I suspected, guys don't seem very anxious to talk about themselves. However, of those who returned the survey, I got quite a lot of very good information . . . although little of it was really surprising. One issue came through clearly: nobody can precisely define midlife.

The one respondent who was less than forty identified himself as not yet in midlife. Two others who were between 40 and 55 (probably at the lower end of the scale) said they were not yet in midlife. Almost 2/3 (61%) of the respondents identified themselves as currently in midlife, Almost all the remaining 1/3 (29%) of the respondents saw midlife as behind them. The data suggest that, rather than being a specific age, or age range, midlife is a state of mind.