Midlife Crisis

I looked up "Midlife Crisis" in wikipedia, where I am told that it is actually not that common, but has been popularized by society. Apparently, when a man around forty gets in a funk, he may call it a "midlife crisis" with the same carelessness that you call someone "obsessive-compulsive" for wanting you to close the door behind you when you enter a room.

Most of us reach a point in which we just don't want the boat rocked all that much any more. I'm not sure if it's fair to call that a "midlife crisis" because it seems a natural byproduct of aging. I think it took me longer than most people to find something like what one could call a "foothold" in life, and what I have of it I'm reluctant to sacrifice. I still have dreams, of course, but I've been growing increasingly wary of them. Fantasies can be good, they can be the sign of a healthy mind, but if you get emotionally attached to a fantasy it may be the sign of an unhealthy psyche. Sure we consider it inspiring to say "follow your dreams", but we conveniently forget that there are words for people who follow their dreams, and it's not just words like "visionary" but also words like "delusional".

What has stalled me, tripped me up and paralyzed me has (as far as I can tell) always been this:

The price you pay.

The easiest example (and there are very many) has to do with classical music. Growing up, I sometimes enjoyed but usually hated practicing piano. What kept me going was the thought of mastering a piece, was my love for music, but mostly -- I'll be honest here -- it was my love of the limelight. I couldn't beat most of my classmates at many things, but I could get attention for being better at piano than most of them. It was like I could exist, and like my existence would be justified, if I was better than others at something, and this was one area where I had a head start.

(Obviously, I loved classical music, too. Listening to Claudio Arrau playing Chopin's first piano concerto moved something in me that made me want to learn to play like that, and it wasn't just my exhibitionist instinct. )

But the real test is: do I want this enough to pay the price for it? And the price included not only the hours of practice, but all the blood, sweat and tears that accompany the emotional investment you put into a dream. And the more I learned about this price, the higher the price seemed to me, until it just seemed unbearably, overwhelmingly costly, and I ceased investing in it.

That's only one example. There are thousands. "Should I do the dishes now, or can it wait another day?" "Should I move to Spain?" "Should I eat in or out tonight?" "Should I open my mouth and give my opinion on the matter currently being discussed around me?" "Should I plan something for this weekend, or just sit back and let it happen?" "Should I try to formulate these thoughts, or just keep them to myself?" "Should I use this afternoon to take a bike ride through the park, or to get my bank papers organized?" There's always a cost, and the cost-benefit ratio is constantly determining my actions. I think most of us are like this, only that we have differing ideas of what constitutes "cost" and what constitutes "benefit."

The older I get, the more rare it is for me to encounter things that I'm really prepared to pay a high price for. Practically everything I do these days is something I do simply because the cost isn't that high. The one thing I still invest anything at all in is travel, but that's because even though a trip across the ocean may come at a high cost, the cost of sitting in one place for too long feels even higher to me.

My version of "midlife crisis" is more or less the "miles to go before I sleep" feeling. If I reach the average life expectancy, I still have another four decades ahead of me. But I've run out of things I want to do with four decades. I've been breathing air for three and a half decades, and, to tell you the truth, it's getting tedious. It depresses me to think that I'm not even halfway done yet. I feel like I've eaten my fill but am still staring at half a plate in front of me. I have no appetite for it. I feel full and slightly bloated, and even a little nauseous at the thought of having to work through all that food still. And you can tell me that I shouldn't waste food because children are starving in Africa, or that I shouldn't offend my host by not finishing the meal, and that might make me dutifully finish my plate, but it won't help me to ENJOY it.

I feel like someone who, sweating and breathless, reaches the top of a ridge, only to realize that he's still less than halfway to his destination. The walk may have been fun and exciting at first, but for a long time now it's been only about energy conservation, and now there's nothing for it but to steel oneself for huffing and puffing the remainder of the way, trying to find ways to distract oneself from the various aches and pains, the thirst and sweat, mosquitoes and sunburns, etc.

I'm not saying that I'm SUFFERING. I'm just feeling what everybody feels when a good party has gone on for too long and one is just tired and no longer in the mood to party. I feel what every hiker feels at some point on a challenging hike, where he thinks, "I'd be happy if this hike were only half as long." He gets into a mode where he can only focus on the trail in front of him, trudging along in a semi-hypnotic state, because there's not enough energy left to look around or take breaks or detours or photos or whatever.

This does not conform to the classic version of a midlife crisis. In fact, this seems to be the opposite of a midlife crisis, because the "classic" midlife crisis involves lamenting the fact that there's not much time left, rather than feeling that the time left is more than one can handle.

Does anyone else experience middle adulthood like this, or is it just me?