What's the Big Deal About Midlife?

As a person who has acted 35-years-old since she was 3 and who has acted 18 since she was 30, I figured I’d understand midlife well enough. I was expecting to be confused by Gen X. As it turns out, quite the opposite is the case. I understand and often enjoy my generation. But midlife . . . what’s the big fuss all about anyway? Maybe the rest of you will resonate with what others have written about the midlife experience. Here goes:

“When life is no longer seen from a perspective of beginnings through a fantasy of continuous expansion and growth, but rather from the perspective of ends and of death through a fantasy of fate and limitations, midlife has arrived.” —Stein, Murray. In Midlife. Dallas: Spring Publications, Inc., 1983, pp. 41.

“Midlife can be a time of personal reorganization due to an increasing awareness of one’s mortality.”

—Kirasic, K.C. Midlife in Context. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004, pp. 121

“It is almost as if middle and late adulthood are the human laboratory in which existentialism is grounded. The preeminent issues are death (one’s own death), finitude, time, anxiety, dread, nothingness (and the threat thereof), and courage in the face of a threat to personal nonbeing.”

—Olson, Richard P. Midlife Journeys: A Traveler’s Guide. Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 1996, pp. 16.

“In midlife, the assumption of nearly every role one will assume peaks. Because of the number of roles, and corresponding number of selves, the midlife adult can be viewed as psychologically fragile. Cultural, familial, and personal expectations for one’s self may clash, resulting in a time of confusion, discontent, and personal disorganization.” —Kirasic, K.C. Midlife in Context. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004, pp. 40.

“As we move onto the second curve of new growth, our lives will expand into a richer, more fully developed maturity. This abundance of life cannot be attained in one’s twenties or thirties. Ripeness comes later.”

—Sadler, William A. The Third Age: Six Principles of Growth and Renewal After Forty. Cambridge, MA, 1999, pp. 45.

According to Erik Erikson, midlife is a time when people work toward guiding the next generations, work that often feels as though it is battling a standstill. Changes in thought during midlife tend to bring about new awareness of self, other, environment, and community. Within such issues, the midlifer faces the pull between positive urges to guide/leave a legacy for future generations and negative urges to let life pass while focusing only on his/her own wants and needs. Midlifers who successfully negotiate the struggle tend to become more caring in addition to developing a religious attitude.

“Midlife crisis” is a common topic of authors examining midlifers. Murray Stein eloquently explains that the root of the crisis is the in-between space midlifers find themselves in, “when the ego is a has-been and a not-yet.” Carl Jung suggests that, in order to successfully navigate through midlife, a person must move from ego-centricity to God-centeredness, to descend into inner life in order to emerge as the Self. Stein explains that moving from young adulthood to older adulthood cannot successfully happen unless the midlifer buries the earlier identity and embraces the person he/she is becoming, which is what Jung meant when he said that whoever “carries over into the afternoon the law of the morning . . . must pay for it with damage to the soul.”

I understand in my head what all this is about, but don’t think I’m experiencing what psychologists call "midlife crisis" any more than I ever have. Honestly, I think I’ve gone through this sort of thing so much that it’s just kind of ordinary, not wonderful, but kind of typical to realize that I’m once again living in a state of “liminality” . . . a land of limbo . . . of being a has-been and a not yet with doors closing while other doors haven’t quite opened. I've always been acutely aware of death and the beautiful fragility of life. I've always had a religious attitude . . . I'm not talking about a specific religion, I'm talking about humility that comes from respecting time and an individual life in comparison with all time and creation. I've always been concerned with leaving a legacy and guiding the next generation . . . well, maybe not ALWAYs, but probably since I was 7 years old. I've been content with who I am even as I change, feeling that I am who I need to be since I was maybe 17. What psychologists call "midlife crisis," I view as adult human life, and I've already been living it and hope to continue until it passes on to something else.

Midlife is sometimes compared to adolescence, and I am quite aware that teenagers cannot see the big picture of all the changes they are going through until their teen time is over. Is that why I feel the way I do about midlife? Am I blinded by the storm? Or is there no new storm? And what kind of a potential hazard is our house with 2 young teenagers and 2 early midlifers? Should someone step in and save us?

I’ll share what other Gen Xers I know have shared about what they think midlife might be in a later post. Until then . . . any insights from voices of experience?


This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com