I wonder if the mid life crisis is a completely modern and secular malady.
Thinking to my religious friends who have 5+ kids, a rich spiritual life and deep engagement with community, it's very hard to imagine them going through one.
Because they are too busy, but mainly because their life is oriented from the get-go around what is very meaningful to them
I thought the circumstances you describe are what leads to the typical midlife crisis. Not always, but people wake up and realize they're trapped in a life (kids, obligations, job) that sort of crept up on them, and feel like they need to let off some steam.
A lot of (perhaps including the article's authors) modern "mid-life crises" are more what I've heard of as "quarter life crises" - you finish school, get a job, you're in a rut where you don't have an obvious next step and you're starting at possible decades of the same, you get depressed. But now a lot of people are like 35 at that time so it almost overlaps with the 80's version of a midlife crisis. This happened to me, I accomplished roughly what I'd planned professionally at about 30 and then realized it wasn't what I wanted and had no idea what to do next.
> I'd planned professionally at about 30 and then realized it wasn't what I wanted and had no idea what to do next.
Oddly enough, I think this is what keeps me from being ambitious in a professional sense. I just feel like, based on everything I read, hear, and see, that we are all just donkeys chasing the metaphorical carrot tied to a stick. I swear, it's like the hedonistic treadmill is turned up a few notches too high.
There is just so much social pressure to jump into the rat race. I mean, part of me wants to be more ambitious -- to really see how far my abilities and efforts can take me.
However, if I have learned one thing in life it is that everything has a cost. So, what if I do accomplish whatever career goals I set out to achieve? I think a lot of the ambition that comes and goes in my head originates not out of a desire to fulfill my own wants but to kind of self-medicate some deep rooted self-esteem issues/feelings of inadequacy.
Thank you for being vulnerable (to the the extent that you were being) with this post.
My two cents, I deeply agree that "everything has a cost" but I don't find that most unambitious people make a conscious trade off.
Most unambitious people I know aren't doing anything with the time and energy they are "saving". They are just kinda passing/wasting it on things that don't satisfy them deeply.
That's different than someone making a conscious decision (eg not taking the most demanding job in order to have time w the family)
The other thing unambitious people often miss is that working hardcore can be fun and energizing in its own right and it can develop you as a person holistically.
I don't think many ambitious people work hard despite hating it every second. I think they rather enjoy it and benefit from it (similar to someone who likes exercise). At least that's been my experience and perception.
> They are just kinda passing\wasting it on things that don't satisfy them deeply.
This notion that you should be grinding for some sort of passion or satisfaction isn't as real as people make it out to be. Some of the most depressed, broken people you meet are highly passionate professionals, celebrities, and artists who found deep satisfaction in their jobs.
When it comes down to it, mental health things are more complicated than chasing you 'passion', whatever that means.
In my experience the happiest and most stable people I know are financially secure. Not hard workers, not working on some magnum opus. Just plain well-off. One is a stay at home dad who hasn't worked a day since he married his wife at 24. Great guy. He isn't posting on hackernews about life hacks and bragging about the grind. He just golfs and raises his kids and winks when I make fun of him for it.
I think you and I agree (I am the person you're responding to)
The guy you mentioned who's busy raising his kids is doing the most important and meaningful work he can possibly be doing. It doesn't have to be a grind to be meaningful. It just needs to be meaningful...
This isn't the same as the archetype I referred to in my post - a guy who's not ambitious but also is not doing anything meaningful or enjoyable with his time and energy (which is very different from your friend)
I once spoke to a counselor who emphasized the seasonal nature of life. Which reminds me of Ecclesiastes 3 (below). Find your seasonal purpose(s) and move in those directions until they are exhausted. Sometimes one's purpose is simply to rest and pray/meditate on the next purpose and phase.
It's hard to discern motivations, but I always like to pray on if what I'm doing is by faith and is loving. Against those things there is no law. At the end of the day, the only thing gained or lost here is eternal, and I'm not going to the grave with any of the earthly accumulations or losses. So most of the "counting the cost" needs to be in the spiritual domain.
The way to deal with this is to avoid the rat race and all the crap that comes with it: lifestyle bloat, houses that own you, fancy cars, etc. it’s a rigged game.
Your job should serve your purposes. Once it stops doing that, something has to change or you’re going to be unhappy.
The curse of midlife is being able to see the need and justification for bullshit like the rat race, knowing full well you perpetuate it in your own small way by participating, while also becoming cognizant that there’s more to life than empty status signaling. You see the extent to which people self-medicate to keep themselves in the race, and the sheer number of people who simply disengage in some way because they can’t deal with it.
I "made it" (financially set for life) in the past two years after selling my company at 33. I was chasing something like it since I was maybe 15, tired of having grown up poor and wanting better for my family and myself.
I'm still not happy but at least I know I'd rather have money and be sad than also being worried about money on top of that. I definitely need to get back some semblance of meaning in my life, but at 34 now (without kids) and still feeling like I'm 25 because my perception of time is warped by attention deficit.. I feel like the only years I care about are soon to be over (under 40).
The further I get from my childhood the less I want to be here.
The biggest problem I noticed in your post is the tense you're using to describe yourself. You're describing your story in the past tense. You now have the resources to write an even more successful/interesting/fulfilling chapter in whatever line of business is most interesting to you and potentially have another step function in wealth. Each step function in wealth gives you more potential for impact in a measurable way in other peoples' lives. I hope you decide that you're just getting started.
> I just feel like, based on everything I read, hear, and see, that we are all just donkeys chasing the metaphorical carrot tied to a stick.
Something that is less analogical and more biographical: we are primates chasing and arguing over the shiniest and new type of banana. The analogical part left is what the "banana" might be.
As primates, we are unbelievably ill-equipped to handle the Internet. This dream of the Internet connecting us together turned into the nightmare it is because it taps into our primitive emotions, which ends up being most of them.
I find no solace in evolutinary psych “explanations” during dark nights of the soul. It feels like nihilism dressed up in Science, with an undertone of “well this is the best we got so tough luck!” to be frank.
I just gave an observation. If one wanted to do something with that observation, then I think it's fair to say that we should design our technology with the limitations of our emotional intelligence in mind. We cannot keep assuming that our emotional intelligence is infinite and can absorb everything we throw at it. Our emotional capacity is limited, and so we should acknowledge that and design our systems with that in mind. But, we don't.
By the way, nihilism is a valid approach as a philosophy and has several important things to say. It is not what it is commonly understood to be.
which factually points out that most people go through several crises in their adult life. As a rule of thumb you have one every seven years or so. I had one around 30, another in my early 40s, and another at 49. If you read between the lines in Freud you could also get the picture that a psychoanalysis would be likely to span the duration of such a crisis (say 18 months) and improve the outcome you get.
The author, Gail Sheehy, gave a talk at Ithaca College about a decade ago and actually said that she disowned that book for a few reasons:
(1) Passages is positive for divorce as a way that people who are evolving at different rates and in different directions to realize themselves. She realized later on that divorce is overall highly destructive.
(2) The paths that people take aren't quite so predictable.
(3) Passages was based on a study of graduates of an elite school, one thing that stands out is that none of the case studies consider serious deprivation, in fact you never once hear that somebody wanted to do X or Y but didn't because they couldn't afford it. In the sense that the experience of most people is "dark matter" you might want to read
In particular divorce might work out well for somebody like Bill Gates or Elon Musk who can trade in their tired old nag for a hot young thing but for most ordinary people and their families it's profoundly harmful.
Sheehy went on to write numerous more books on the same subject.
Love this, maps really well onto my experience. I see (and feel) a sharp deliniation between do-ers and be-ers, with the be-ers wishing they could do, and the do-ers not having time to process what they're doing.
> for ordinary people and their families it's profoundly harmful
People want (and believe they deserve) what they used to have, or what they see someone else has. I think the crux of the midlife crisis is coming to terms with tradeoffs. Everyone has spent potential to get where they are, and there aren't do-overs.
"I think the crux of the midlife crisis is coming to terms with tradeoffs. Everyone has spent potential to get where they are, and there aren't do-overs." << This. It is at the same time crisis-inducing and very motivating, depending on your situation and personality. You look down the pike and think "If I have an average lifespan, I can kick this shit into gear and have the whole timespan I've already lived to get some stuff done" or you think "I only have (x) years left, it's too late already." But either way, the crux of the matter is that you have a limited set of choices left. You had a limited set of choices before, too, but young people don't realize that. They don't quite feel the chapters being ripped out of the book of life yet, they don't see the just-pruned branches falling from the tree of life... Every affirmative choice you make is also a choice that kills something else. And this is not bad, necessarily -- a well-pruned fruit tree yields more fruit, without breaking. But it's not how we've been raised. We've been raised with limitlessness. We have not been raised with the interior disciplines of pruning and weeding and culling.
I had the sense last year that the limitless desire for a different life is a destructive force.
Mid-life crisis examples of how this desire shows up as regret: "What if I had stayed with that previous girlfriend instead of marrying my wife?", "What if I had moved to this other city instead of my home?", etc.
My personal conclusion is that this limitless desire is a dark pit of despair with no bottom. This may be part of the reasoning behind the tenth commandment seems to be applicable - "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."
That desire can be toxic to the point of destruction is mostly treated as a foreign concept to our contemporary world.
So, I made the conscious choice to go in the other direction toward the light, and to see what adventure awaits over there.
Not sure fully what that means yet, but a part of it at least is accepting and embracing my own life as it is today, including all of the constraints.
It seems to me like the path out of the mid-life crisis is about signing up for the next adventure, letting go of the past, and looking forward to what's still to come. And most definitely not letting "desire for else" ruin my gratitude for the fact that I am highly fortunate, and still quite able to live, experience, do, and be so much.
it doesn't deal with the "voicelesness" of the "working class" (closer to the British idea of "working class" than the Marxist one, notably "working class" people in Britain frequently aren't working) but that voicelessness is a defining characteristic of that group. Anyone who finds a voice has left that class and can't really speak for it.
You are asking a lot of the word often here. Also, the perspective of who it is healthy for is skewed according to the data out there on outcomes after divorce.
Most people are ruined financially by it. If you are a pro baseball player or Hollywood actor you can afford to lose half your wealth and support two households. People in the bottom 80% can’t afford it.
> Thinking to my religious friends who have 5+ kids, a rich spiritual life and deep engagement with community, it's very hard to imagine them going through one.
I grew up in a church and will tell you right off the bat that neither church nor family prevents one. Googling will give you no shortage of Christian articles and resources around dealing with them. Nobody is immune to that sense of "everything looks peachy on the outside, internally there's a lot of frustration" with the status quo. It does give you a big blast radius so your midlife crisis can wreck a family or two, though, if it leads you towards certain things.
Also, 5+ kids may seem helpful, but not because you won't face existential crisis with five kids -- you just will have more trouble finding time to process. Kids keep you very busy, until they don't.
As an ex-church person: the "community" is pretty hurtful to a lot of people and isn't immune to high school clique / cult of personality type things, even if you discount other obvious harms (the experience of gay kids in church, women being told they can't teach, way-too-frequent abuses of adolescents by church authorities like youth pastors and priests).
Christian stuff in particular is also heavy on the shame and that is pretty bad for psychological safety & wellness. My mother in law was a divorcee and made to feel real bad about that even to this day. As a boy I remember growing up and self-flagellating for every "impure" thought that crossed my mind. "Rich spiritual life" is a pretty branding phrase for bankrupt ideology.
Its sad that you had such a negative experience of church, due to people's failings. Its not like that everywhere. There are church communities that are welcoming to people that are divorced, gay, etc. Sounds like you've been among people who lack of proper understanding of "love others as yourself" and "judge not lest thy be judged" which are fundamental to true Christianity (and other religions too). I'd advocate, don't give up, don't dismiss religion based on people's failings, but instead, challenge people
Another way to look at it is that this isn't "people's failings." This is structural. Churches perpetuate problematic power structures and base their teachings on incoherent writings that can easily be interpreted to mean all kinds of nasty things. You can point to Jesus sayings in "true Christianity" and still have to explain yourself as to why Apostle Paul is allowed to say some crazy stuff in the same compilation text (the bible) that everyone loves to harp on. Also, didn't Jesus compare a gentile woman to a dog? Wowza that's some offensive and racist stuff.
> There are church communities that are welcoming to people that are divorced, gay, etc
There are plenty of church communities that _claim_ to be welcoming to such folks. You don't have to stick around long to see that it's not true. And it's also not hard to see why - the underlying foundations of the Christian church especially are rotten. Churches don't have full control of their congregants so churches will never be safe spaces as long as they teach from texts that are racist, sexist, and encourage illogical thinking. I _did_ church shop for a year in hip San Francisco of all places, before coming to this (obvious in hindsight) realization. TBT that time I walked into a church and the first thing they said was "Women were created to be mens' helper" - a panel with Francis Chan. Walked out pretty fast after that.
> I'd advocate, don't give up, don't dismiss religion based on people's failings, but instead, challenge people
What does that mean -- challenge people? You're encouraging folks like me to put up with endless bullshit and look for something that doesn't exist. No thanks.
Thanks for reply :) By "challenge people" - I mean, rather than put up with BS, relentlessly challenge it, call it out . One might attack homophobia like this: "You believe in a loving God? OK. Does a loving God smite down someone who finds themselves to be gay, or does God celebrate all committed loving relationships including ones that happen to be of the same gender". OK, I'm very liberal on this, and some Christian friends wouldn't take the same line, but they don't seem to dismiss this argument completely. I have a friend who's happily been going to a Catholic church for decades. He lives with a long-term male partner. He doesn't shout from the rooftops that he's gay but doesn't hide it either. Many people like him a lot. Some of them may think its not OK to be gay, but they like him anyway. They also do seem to believe in "sort yourself out rather than judging other". So it seems to just work out really. I agree with you about churches perpetuating problematic power structures, clericalism and so forth.. But that in itself is people's failings isn't it? Doesn't mean that all or even many Christians are supportive of that. Treatment of women - often women are not treated well , whether in the church or not. Shouldn't be happening.. but again human failings rather than something fundamental about religion or church per se, IMHO. Personally I think that churches such as Catholic, Orthodox etc that don't allow women to be priests, should be re-evaluating that, I don't see that's what Jesus wanted, and its very disrespectful, and wasting 50% of human talent to ban women, IMHO. Little secret, here in the UK amongst Catholic laity you'll find most support women priests. As regards nasty things in the bible, well, taken literally the bible can seem offensive, appalling etc, that's why to me we also need 2000 years worth of theologians thought to interpret it, and need to be careful about going straight to it picking out bits because can get wild misinterpretations that way. To use your example of apparent racism, isn't The Good Samaritan a good counter-example i:e anti-racist? I guess my entire argument is this - when we encounter people claiming to be of a religion that promotes love to each other, and they blatantly do the opposite, we should in the nicest possible way call that out and invite them to do what they claim to believe. Also there's a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about what teachings are, what Jesus really said, a misunderstanding that God is somehow punitive or vengeful which Jesus tried to clear up but we still seem to fall victim to. Well, if you don't believe in all of this anyway, fine, no problem :) There are a lot of atheists out there who behave in a much better way than most Christians. ;) I have a couple of friends like that too. Doesn't stop me arguing (politely) with them though ;)
Dude if your religion needs 2000 years of theologians to interpret correctly, all the while being a pretext for war, genocide, racism, sexism, and an accidental source of child abuse, your religion sucks and the world would be better off without it.
You don't need "better Christians" -- you need people to stop being Christians.
> Also there's a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about what teachings are, what Jesus really said, a misunderstanding that God is somehow punitive or vengeful which Jesus tried to clear up but we still seem to fall victim to.
That your religion is this incoherent is itself a huge problem and the source of many ills.
> I agree with you about churches perpetuating problematic power structures, clericalism and so forth.. But that in itself is people's failings isn't it? Doesn't mean that all or even many Christians are supportive of that.
You're saying blame the priest who diddled kids, not the church that teaches priests to repress their natural urges until they manifest in taking advantage of defenseless children. You're saying blame the idiots who "misinterpreted" the Bible and created churches where women cannot lead, and not the texts that provide the argument for their behavior. That's not agreeing with me on problematic power structures, that's failing to see problematic power structures.
> Treatment of women - often women are not treated well , whether in the church or not. Shouldn't be happening.. but again human failings rather than something fundamental about religion or church per se, IMHO.
Except that the basis for western oppression for women is largely rooted in Judeo-Christian beliefs. And in the middle east, Islam is the source.
Someone downvoted you but it wasn't me. We possibly shouldn't carry this on too long in case people feel its gone way off topic, but.. these are important subjects. To address some of your points :). "if your religion needs 200 yr of theologians" ... its not the religion, its the Bible. Big difference. Its hardly surprising if a book written 2000 yrs ago, totally different time, culture etc, needs expertise to be understood , and going to it directly and trying to make sense of it cause confusion, right? Pretext for genocide etc... well, terrible things have been done in the name of religion, but terrible things happen with or without religion. Look at Russia/Ukraine. I'd argue its not religion causing it. People that want to hate will find something to fight about be it religion, resources, power, football teams etc. I do agree actually that where people's beliefs are incoherent this is the source of many ills. But I'd argue against that being the fundamental religion being incoherent. Regarding abuse by clerics, I do agree, and I think a lot of Christians would, that the rule of celibacy for priests is extremely unhelpful, and has led as you say, to deviant behaviour and abuse that has wrecked people's lives. The response by church(es) has been severely lacking, often appalling, and the main reason for that would seem to be that the hierarchy themselves are celibate, not having normal healthy relationships and haven't a clue how what to do. So I, like many others would advocate ditch the celibacy requirement ASAP. The hierarchy don't necessarily think they can do that though, they think they'll alienate churches in the developing world, cause a schism etc, its a mess. But, and you may think I'm an idiot to say this, I argue again, that's human failings, and doesn't mean that the religion should be thrown away as unworkable. I would believe, that's not what Jesus would have wanted. Now, maybe you don't believe, and that's absolutely fine. No-one should ever be pressured into having any beliefs or religion (yet another thing unhelpful people have done within the church, and again, nevertheless not a reason to disband it IMHO). But I would say, maybe stay away from the church if you don't believe, but if you have any hint of belief, try to fix these problems. By, like I say, challenging people. Regarding Judaism, Christianity and Islam being the source of oppression of women, that's certainly an interesting one, I'd have to go away and think about that. Gut feeling , its unlikely to be the only source of that, but I know what you're saying there's certainly been structural oppression of women within organised religion. To summarise I think a lot of things that anger you about the church its absolutely fair to be furious about, and these issues massively frustrate people inside it who still regularly go to church. Where we differ is indeed that you say people should stop being Christians whereas I do indeed say people should be better Christians. Hope you can find happiness and purpose anyway whatever route you take. :)
Honestly, seeing some catholic families with 5+ kids, the model where one partner simply spends all time in work and hobbies while leaving all childcare to the other one is super common too.
I'm East Asian. Guilt and shame here are the same thing -- the distinction between moral vs non-moral is blurry at best. The only difference is who you're disappointing and what the perceived consequence is.
Interestingly, it seems like some women's monastic communities (ostensibly the pinnacle of rich spiritual life and engagement with community) are much less likely to experience midlife crises, see https://www.jstor.org/stable/43682330 Figures 1 and 2.
I reckon nuns don't deal with a lot of Zoom job interviews after being laid off, pointy-haired bosses, relationship troubles, making ends meet, and paying rent. That helps a little.
Nearing-50, non-religious person checking in here: I don't think it has much to do with religion or non-religion. I must be really lucky or really privileged because I haven't had even a hint of "crisis" that I can remember. Knock on wood that I don't catch it somewhere.
Isn't the common denominator of a midlife crisis a yearning for the past? Overwhelming nostalgia? Dad buying a sports car so he can pretend to be 20 and virile again? Mom downing the mimosas at 10AM wishing she didn't make so many mistakes in the past? Uncle Joe can't stop talking about how he was High School senior football captain and had the time of his life in the '70s and that everything sucks now?
Me, on the other hand? I'd never want to go back to my 30s or 20s and especially my teenage years. High School was literally the worst part of my life, I'm talking rock bottom, and my 20s were not much better. But every year thereafter has been better than the previous one. I'm totally optimistic about the future! And while I might not be making more money year after year, I always feel like I have a purpose to achieve, and as my kid grows up, there always seems like there are future moments to look forward to. None of this requires religion.
Dads often buy sportscars around fifty or so not to pretend they are twenty and hot again, but because they are finally in a position to do so. Finances mostly in order, kids are leaving the nest and seem to be doing OK.
So you see that car you have always wanted but never bought because it's impractical and expensive and say to yourself, "I don't need four seats any more, and I do have the money if I'm careful. Why not? I've always wanted it."
Of course some folks do this irresponsibly, but it doesn't have to be a fantasy about pretending to be something you used to be. Just now you can, when before you couldn't.
> Isn't the common denominator of a midlife crisis a yearning for the past? Overwhelming nostalgia?
I don't think so. I'd describe a midlife crisis as more of a fear you don't have enough time to do what's next. I've always wanted a Ferrari; if I don't get it now, when will I? I discovered bouldering in my 40's and hate the fact that I can never be competitive; if only I had started 20 years earlier... at this point, every year limits how much time I have left for those new adventures I haven't discovered yet.
I think Uncle Joe just complains because he's crabby.
Exactly this. You realize that your choices actually matter in the big picture. You have only so many years to work with, it becomes clear that some of the things in the “later” bucket will have to move to the “never” bucket. That makes you question things much more. Should I really go to the pub for the umpteenth time with my mates and lose my Sunday to a hangover? Oh I’d rather do something else and get a full Sunday! That’s only one example, but it is also a good one. You can try to make the most of your loss of invincibility and infinity and utilize that feeling to make better choices than in the past. No point dwelling on if those 10000 hours playing video games were well spent.
Isn't the stereotypical midlife crisis the Dad whose kids have all moved out? I don't think that has anything to do with modernity or secularity, it's more to do with a large change that triggers a revaluation of your life. That could happen to anyone.
I think that too is a modern and secular thing. If you got 5 kids there's a good chance the older one has made you a grandfather while the younger ones are still at home. So you sort of transition from meaning to meaning
That's the stereotypical midlife crisis "what" for sure. I was more talking about the "who". My point was I don't think it's limited to the secular modern person.
A man wakes up in a strange room
He doesn't recognize the woman next to him
He gets out of bed, there's a wallet on the dresser
He opens it up, looks inside at the driver's license in there with his face on it
And someone else's name
I grew up as an ultra orthodox Jew - where people have 5+ kids and there is a lot of focus on religious life and community. There are plenty of extremely bitter people who might love their kids but feel trapped by the lifestyle (they don't want to leave their kids, spouse but it gives them no space for anything else). And many of them struggle with meaning in life - the community, religion and kids don't solve that.
Different religion, but my ex-wife's family were all baptists and I've never met women as angry at men as the older women in that family. They had obeyed and submitted and got angrier and angrier as the decades wore on. Didn't help that, despite the strict religion, there was a good bit of alcoholism amongst the men.
They did have very good food at the family reunions, and a big family, but that's about the limit of positive characteristics I can enumerate. (Not that everyone was bad, a few cousins managed to join the modern world of loving-kindness and science).
I am somewhat familiar with Orthodox Jews, though probably a different area than what you grew up with.
I think what's been lost in places is that living an outwardly religious life is one thing[0], while being deeply religious inwardly is the next level. The second thing is harder to teach or even talk about so it gets ignored, vs ritual etc.
It's maybe the same as the difference between "dragging yourself to the gym"[0] and "loving fitness."
//And many of them struggle with meaning in life - the community, religion and kids don't solve that.
This seems like the crux of the difference between deep and superficial engagement with religion. In my experience, a deeply religious person (of any religion) sees a profound amount of connectivity and meaning in everything in the universe, and sees their family and community life in the context of contributing to that meaning. The statement you made is analogous to me to "working out doesn't make you fitter" - it puts a big question mark around the exercise you're doing.
[0] While obviously connecting deeply is the goal, there's a lot of benefit to even the less deep engagement. Your friends whom you describe as bitter - you can imagine that the secular society is full of bitterness too, plus no community or kids. Likewise, even if you "drag yourself to the gym" you're way ahead of those who don't, even though you may hate it.
I don't see how the kids "blessing" their parents with grandchildren matters much. My parents had a hard time adapting after I, as the youngest, also moved out and finally started being able to support myself, even though they had grandchildren from my eldest sibling to think about.
In the end, for them the point still stands that their own kids are adults now, and while grandchildren are fun to take care of, they aren't typically the same amount of responsibility on grandparents as on parents. It still leads to suddenly having time to think about their own life, as well as the freedom to take risks, creating the same room for a crisis.
> My parents had a hard time adapting after I, as the youngest, also moved out and finally started being able to support myself, even though they had grandchildren from my eldest sibling to think about.
"Thinking about" probably won't do them much good. Seeing them on a regular basis, on the other hand, has great effects on many grandparents. Obviously, this requires that children don't move far away from parents, but many family-oriented parents stay close.
100% . People who prioritise helping others, as long as they don't overdo it and burn out, are far less prone to depression. Having a bad day? Feeling depressed, frustrated with your life? Go do something to put a smile on someone else's face. That can really snap you out of it. Of course, we (and I'd have to include myself) all forget to do this as often as we should. I agree that its a secular malady. Its almost as though Jesus was exactly right and knew what was good for us ( * caveat - this is based on an assumption that Jesus actually existed / what he said was correctly reported ;). )
The U Curve probably correlates with midlife crises being that being at the low of the U curve with some other push triggers a crises. But yeah religiosity does correlate positively with happiness (no surprise there - you offload existential worries for religious dogma)
For what it's worth, I don't think this is right. The "well, how did I get here?" problem can happen to anybody. Maybe it's not happening to your friends, but certainly there are many people like them who wake up some days wondering why they are struggling to find enough purpose and meaning in all those beautiful things they've built their lives around, and battling to envision their path back to contentment.
We gave up religion(s) and tradition(s) for consumerism, turns out buying shit is not the optimal long term fulfilment panacea. Add absolute lack of body and mind hygiene and you get to feel like a complete waste of life by the time you hit your 40s. By then you realise discipline/work could have put you in a really nice place, socially, physically, professionally, but now it's too late, the damage is done, you can only pick up the crumbs and have to work twice as hard to get anywhere close to what it could have been => mid life crisis.
Buying a porsche gt3 and a nice house with a swimming pool won't make up for wasting 20+ yours of your life behind a desk
It's not!! We were told as kids that prophets in general became prophets at that age around 40!! It's the case for Mohammed at least and if your read up on his life around that age, you can easily imagine he was going through a mid-life crisis!!
One can imagine anything, including unrealistic and baseless things. Reality, however, is different. This is evident by the many people who carefully studied his biography and ended up embracing Islam (some of them being heavily anti-Islam themselves before that).
A mid-life crisis is not necessarily a bad thing!! It's probably one of the most important spiritual experiences a person can have. We are told that Mohammed used to spend long times in the Hiraa cave kinda meditating or thinking about things that are not part of ordinary life.. Somebody with midlife crisis is one who has questions and searching for answers! They are asking: "Who am I? What am I doing in this world!?"
Lol no, I saw religious cousins’ families go through major shakeups during midlife crises. One ended with divorce after a nice string of affairs and a departure from the church. Another was quitting a stable white collar job, buying a motorcycle, and spending nearly every night at a bar.
A community does not prevent them. A spiritual life definitely doesn’t prevent them (disillusionment is frequently a cause). Kids don’t help, but they certainly put immense pressure on you to not upend everything so it gives the appearance that it might not be happening to outsiders.
> religious friends ... it's very hard to imagine them going through one
So much great literature and philosophy was written specifically because religious people went through crises of faith where they re-interpreted their entire social/religious world. Kierkegaard being one most people know.
because they've outsourced most critical decisions to their faith. As Jung said, people don't have ideas, ideas have people. It's very easy to obtain meaning by getting in a sense hijacked by a very convincing set of beliefs.
It's also very easy to fall for the sensation that not being religious grants one omniscient knowledge of those who are. Somewhat ironically, some religions are some of the best ways to learn about this and other important phenomena that seem unknown to secularists (in ways that are important, and doing some reading ain't guaranteed to make the cut).
Everyone is doing their best, but each of us have our own blind spots. Best to work as a team so we can cover each other's shortcomings.
Or you could just look out the window and see Jung simply made an objective observation. Facts don't need an authoritative voice to make them any truer.
> Thinking to my religious friends who have 5+ kids, a rich spiritual life and deep engagement with community, it's very hard to imagine them going through one.
As someone who grew up in a religious family/community, this comment made me burst out laughing.
Please don't cross into religious flamewar. That's the last thing we want in HN threads, and we're trying to avoid flamewar, putdowns, and name-calling in general. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking that intention to heart, we'd be grateful.
Fortunately most other commenters sharing your point of view in this thread have been making their substantive points thoughtfully, so there are plenty of good examples nearby.
Edit: unfortunately your account has been posting a lot of unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments - e.g.
To me, this is better for a causality oriented approach to things, versus the "cultural common sense, everyone knows" intuitive approach that seems to be recommended.
What a load of crap. Many of us haven’t been to church in decades yet still are in loving marriages with kids, not frowning and “all alone.” If there’s resentment it’s in part an effect of this stupid insistence that only religious “solutions” can lead to happiness.
> I wonder if the mid life crisis is a completely modern and secular malady
The hint is in the name - crisis.
I genuinely think it's a point people reach where they realize (or finally admit to themselves) that what they've been doing with their lives up until this point is deeply unsatisfying, so they make drastic changes.
Our "modern" western life is not fulfilling, healthy or enjoyable.
>Our "modern" western life is not fulfilling, healthy or enjoyable.
Who is "our"? Western countries, especially Anglo countries, are comprised of a thousand thousand different cultures. Which among those are unfulfilling, unenjoyable, unhealthy? I'm sure some are nice. We're not all the same, not remotely.
> Which among those are unfulfilling, unenjoyable, unhealthy?
I was thinking of the one where we go to jobs for 40+ hours a week that are not fulfilling, we don't get to spend much time with our families, we don't get time to sleep and exercise enough... and we have to do it for essentially our entire lives in the hopes we'll get a few years to be put out to pasture
There are many other ways to go about it, wealth is not needed to live a fulfilling life.
I have found it extremely fulfilling to work for my own needs - building houses, hunting my own food, growing my own vegetables. Doing so takes 20-30 hours per week, and the rest of the time I get to spend with my friends and family.
Obviously it's not for everyone, but I'm saying that people get into a mid life "crisis" because they realize what they've been doing isn't making them happy deep down.
Sounds like a nice balance! You might not be rich (or you might be, I don't know) but you're wealthier than most, in the sense of financial independence.
I don't think I'm financially independent in the sense that most people use that phrase. I certainly don't have enough money that I can just sit around all day every day even for 6 months. I would have no food and no heat and would die.
I have to work, but it's working directly for my own survival, not working for a boss to earn money to buy my survival.
Yes I wouldn't be surprised at all. It's easy to see how much lower suicide rates are for example in so called "third world" countries that have been war torn, due to no small part by Western colonialism, compared to "advanced first world" countries, which are generally highly secular and have higher standards of living. Believing in God plays a major role in maintaining mental sanity, particularly in the faces of challenges.
Personally speaking, Islam has helped me and many others I have either personally observed or heard about navigate far from ideal circumstances. I've known people who have lost spouses, children, or even entire close families, yet they remain steadfast and strong.
Thinking to my religious friends who have 5+ kids, a rich spiritual life and deep engagement with community, it's very hard to imagine them going through one.
Because they are too busy, but mainly because their life is oriented from the get-go around what is very meaningful to them