Now that I have left my job, I get this question a lot. Below is something I wrote about 6 months back when I asked myself the same question in starting to ponder this move:
I am restless and a little bit unsatisfied with my life. I don’t really know what my next step should be and I am considering leaving my job. Am I having a midlife crisis? What is that anyway? I am still in my 30’s but I have always been a little ahead of my age. I am not looking to get some cosmetic surgery, buy an RV or red sports car, or cheat on my wife with a 20 year old or anything but how do I know if my own reason and drives can be trusted? The truth is that I can’t.
Like a prisoner that never made it out of Plato’s cave I can’t know if this is reality that I am in or just some weird shadow world that seems to make sense in the moment. I lack the perspective since I am in it. A more useful question might be whether it even matters if I am of sound mind or not? What are the repercussions of being wrong here?
If I quit my job and travel and work on some of the things on my living the dream list, what are the downsides? Buying a red sports car may be fine if I have all kinds of discretionary cash laying around? Sleeping with a 20 year old may get me divorced and in therapy really upset with myself (ooh that one may not be a great choice). Someone (I looked it up and it was Phillip K Dick), said that “reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” Based on this, I think a good proxy for stepping outside of your own reality is to bounce your thoughts off of others who don’t believe in subjectivity…. like your accountant or local laws and regulations. I have this financial side taken care of. After 15-20 years of work, financial savvy, and some good fortune to boot, I don’t need to work to make ends meet (unless I totally blow it). I’m also not looking to become Walter White so I’m probably good on the laws and regulations. So maybe I can afford a midlife crisis but what is it and where does it come from?
What is a Mid-Life Crisis?
My own belief is that this is less about age and more about life potential and life constraints. When you are young, you have endless potential and no life constraints. But you also have no skills, relationships, experiences, and savings so you pursue some of those things to get you going and you take a few interim gigs. The trick is that at some point you start to see that this IS your life. That what you have been doing may be who you are and who you will continue to be. All of that potential is less fun when you actually have to realize it. And, unless you aimed low, what you aspired to be potential wise is likely more than you now have = collision with reality as you see your prime moving over your shoulder.
At the same time, all of those things that you have built up around yourself are great in ways but they also put constraints on you. If you have a wife, 2 kids, and a mortgage, you are likely not Jack Kerouac or Che Guevara. At the same time, you are probably not sleeping in a boxcar next to a madman or being murdered by the Bolivian army and tossed into an unmarked grave. Moreover, because you have people that see you a certain way, it feels constraining to the other parts of yourself that do not get exercised or you never had room to develop. You may love those people and the relationship that you’ve built but still want freedom to change. From husband, to father, to boss or employee, to community reputation, the roles can be a lot of uniforms to wear and sometime’s you just want to go skinny dipping.
My best guess is that mid-life crisis is really about the weight of constraints and the reconciliation of potential with reality. My other best guess (according to my accountant and local law) is that I can have a mid-life event without it being a crisis by trying to understand my own needs and then managing the way that I meet these needs without betraying the people and things that I love in my life. So to summarize, maybe this is a mid life crisis but does it even matter and where are the keys to my RV so I can get back on the road again with the wind blowing through my ridiculous hair piece. There’s lot’s of stuff I want to do but Don’t call it a bucket list.
