Mid-Life Reassessment

What is a mid-life crisis? Many psychotherapists say that it comes when you get to a point in life where you believe your best days are behind you. Maybe you’ve reached the pinnacle of your career and you struggle with the belief that you’ll never be as good as you once were. Maybe you haven’t accomplished all that you wanted and you look at the time you have left and begin to feel unworthy, thinking that you never will. Or maybe you have gotten everything you ever wanted . . . and feel unfulfilled, realizing you wanted the wrong things.

I don’t know that it means anything at all, but I am a little fascinated by the fact that the concept of the mid-life crisis has only appeared in our lexicon in the past hundred years . . . about the time our life expectancy moved from 50 years to 80-ish. It seems to seize people at the point that their lives would have otherwise ended had we not had such advances in nutrition, medicine, and safety. And it is for that reason that I like to think of any years following that point to be the extra years, the gifted years, the bonus life. I know it’s not that simple. It costs money to live the bonus life, but it comforts me to think of it as “bonus” – without expectation and with nothing to prove.

I have a friend in Hawaii who sleeps in his van. I say it like that because he lives in the ocean. He surfs all day and makes his money sharing with others the joy of surfing. He and I were having dinner together one evening at a picnic table outside a food truck and the conversation went like this:

“Mandy, I’m 52 years old. Maybe I should get my shit together.”

“Jon, (not his real name), I know a lot of 52 year olds in the business world saying the same thing, but they’re picturing a life like yours.”

Every day, Jon (not his real name) puts two bare feet on this earth and is connected to the greatest source of transcendent energy any of us could ever have. He is living his bonus life with intention. He hears the whispers of the universe without even realizing that other people don’t. I am trying to draw from his energy to do the same.