> I wonder if the "midlife" part of midlife crisis does some harm.

As someone who more or less started a midlife crisis last year, this rings true. Among other things, there's a social double bind that lies at the root of this that must be examined.

On one hand, young people are framed as unable to understand themselves and that they must suck it up and act like adults. On the other hand, when those that do "suck it up" later end up in crisis, they are demeaned with, "You should have figured yourself out by now."

I yearn for a world where midlife crises are a cause for community celebration. One where we can say, "Tayo42, this is an important time in your life and everyone is here to rally around you while you navigate these feelings."

Instead we seem to socially allow for, but discourage people from self reevaluations - that there's a window in midlife for people to rediscover themselves, realign their goals, and sort out their lives, but instead of celebrating, we discourage it. And for what? So that we maintain the illusion of some sort of identity integrity?

Maybe I have something to learn here, but it would be hard to convince me that the current state of the social response to crises is anything but maladaptive.

I have a suspicion that the reason for the discouragement of midlife crisis is inflexibility in a society where people must work to earn money to live. If you're in your 30s and have dependents, quitting your job puts the QoL of your dependents in peril because there's no general societal-level support program for that sort of life pivot.

That makes sense. It explains how social pressure bifurcates the group.

There are those who don't have the resolve to go through with it, but end up in this persistent feeling of emptiness brought about by self-alienation.

And those who do enter into some crisis, but feel the social friction when their actions run counter to norms but the relief of internal alignment associated with self-actualization.

It's pretty sad that rather than offering social support to folks in crisis so that they have a safety net during this process to limit the downside, we've instead inverted the environment to limit the upside. The opportunity loss is confounding. There's a terrible self-reenforcing mechanism at play which goes like this, "Look, things are terrible for people in crisis. Don't be like them," all while contributing to the terrible environment that's being positioned as inevitable.

I agree. I think we've done a very good job at dismantling exactly the sorts of support networks that would normally fill this role - namely family and community. It seems as though these networks would generally step in during any sort of crisis experienced by a member and help keep things stable.

The state-run, compulsory alternatives seem a poor substitute, and I'm not sure we're socio-biologically equipped to make the transition. The only way forward seems to be to identify the cause(s) for the dissolution of family and community as reliable networks and revert/fix them.

I wish I could recommend Bowling Alone[1] from personal experience, but I expect those that have read it would find this to be an apt place to drop such a suggestion.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0-7432...

At 35 I started calling myself “middle aged” and my coworkers around the same age looked at me like I was insane and then a rather uncomfortable discussion ensued about age and average lifespan in the US. Nobody in their 30s wants to think that they are in fact “middle aged” and it might be the time to have a “midlife crisis”.

It's even worse when you take into consideration quality of life. For many people their last decade may come with severe medical issues.

That's why you need to let go of this idea of some awesome 2 decades of retirement where you finally get to enjoy and do all the things you want.

You'll be broken, half your friends are dead or dying, the kids won't visit, and you have no energy.

I'm being intentionally brutal to make it as clear as I can. Whatever you want to do, do it NOW. During good years.

Or even worse, you could die in a car accident tomorrow. So much for a midlife crisis, let alone happy retirement.

Obviously, throwing the future to the wind and only caring about the present is stupid, but like you say there is absolutely an argument to be made that we should make the most of the time we have right now because tomorrow isn't guaranteed.

Retirement is a new thing, however. In fact, this is the first generation to retire with money being paid for by the current working generation. If you are using that same system for your retirement, you are basically betting on the new-born of today to pay for your retirement.

35 years from now.

Think about how much the world, technology, politics and ideology have changed since 1987. If you think the born-now will honor your retirement claim (that you/gov are making since new-born can't agree?) then, yeah, go for that retirement thing.

I think a lot of it is that people mostly think of it as "the middle phase of adult life" rather than "the middle of your entire life"; 20s and 30s are when people traditionally establish their careers and families, 40s and 50s are the "middle age" where people would settle down into a routine with their career, raising their kids, etc., and then after that they'd start thinking about retirement and the "golden years" so to speak. If someone has followed this sort of pattern in their own life, it's probably pretty jarring to think of yourself as only just approaching the tail end of your establishing phase of your adult life and then have it pointed out that you might be past the midpoint of your lifespan.

That said, I've also always found the terms "middle aged" and "midlife crisis" to be weird due to them not really making a lot of sense literally. Idioms like this seem pretty common in everyday language though, to the point of being standardized; as a young kid I was shocked when my punishment for some minor thing that was supposed to be for the "weekend" extended into Sunday despite the fact that our family calendar clearly showed it as the beginning of the week, not the end. It's not just language either; the earliest New Year's Eve I can remember, my parents had a very hard time convincing me that we had changed from December 31 to January first at 12:00 because it seemed so unreasonable to me that 12 would be the first hour of the day instead of the last, and I felt cheated that I didn't get to stay up until 1:00 like I expected.

It's all about the culture of your location. In New York City, 35 is young and vibrant and full of life.

Yeah I'm 34 in SF, turning 35 this autumn, and feeling like I'm literally in my prime. Old enough to have matured, experienced enough to have some good battle scars, young and energetic enough that there's decades of quality life ahead of me.

The mindset stability that came in the past few years has been nice. Hustling for the shiniest immediate goal in sight no longer appeals, but there's plenty of energy to go after long-term goals in ridiculously effective ways. The sort of laser focus and disregard for extraneous bullshit that 10 years ago I couldn't even imagine was possible.

It's nice. Life is barely getting started.

> Yeah I'm 34...and feeling like I'm literally in my prime.

You are. Most people don't realize that until they're in their 40s.

He's not. Assuming he's male, physical peak is near 26, intellectual peak early to mid 20s. This doesn't mean you can't learn new things nor does it mean your body isn't fit anymore, it just means you're already on the way down.

It won't feel that way though, I understand.

> Assuming he's male, physical peak is near 26,

My measurable physical stats are much better than they were at 26. Yes I notice junk food a little sooner and can't handle as much alcohol. But I can run a marathon faster, do better in the boxing ring, and can lift more weight with higher volume.

The main physical drawback that I can see are slower reflexes. That comes out in the boxing ring when going against people 10+ years younger.

> intellectual peak early to mid 20s.

Depends what kind of intellectual peak you measure. My focus is better and more intense. My ability to learn new stuff has greatly increased because I have a bigger vaster framework to hang new knowledge onto.

And I am infinitely better at solving difficult problems in a dumb easy way because I no longer care about showing off how smart I am. This not only makes my solutions easier to build, they're also easier to maintain so future me will have less work to do.

What I'm probably less good at these days is waxing poetically about the sort of very deep thoughts that feel deep to a 25 year old. And pointless brain twisty puzzles that I was never good at anyway.

I'd say these days, intellectually speaking, I'm more of a reliable orc that plows through problems with brute force, than an elf fleeting about using dexterity.

+1 on the boxing part. My problem is more about stamina and cardio than it is about reflexes. I do see the reflex problem so when going against a couple of weight classes below myself, heavier people tend to be a tad slower anyways. But then I reached a point where the younger folks tend to go easier on me, not sure if I like that. Not that I train half as much as I wished I did, Covid really put a dent into that...

With age comes the wisdom on how to best apply the learning.

And the wisdom for deciding what is worth learning. Don't underestimate that effectiveness multiplier.

A friend died at 51 not long ago. If you die at is age, you are already 68% of the way there. It's not barely getting started, it's behind you.

More realistically, a man who is 35 years old has a life expectancy of another 43 years, so not quite there yet.

> More realistically, a man who is 35 years old has a life expectancy of another 43 years, so not quite there yet.

It's crazy how much this can vary. I'm 34, but I'm female and from a family where multiple people have lived to be over 110. I've always estimated my 'mid life'/halfway mark to be about 45.

Sure but the effectiveness of upcoming years seems much higher. Where I used to toil for 10 hours to do something, I can do the same thing now in 1 hour.

Resources are higher too. For lots of things that used to take time, I can just pay someone.

And lets not forget I spent the first 10 to 15 years being basically useless.

I wonder if this is the result of being surrounded by so much marketing.

Coincidentally, I read an article in the Economist about male fertility that said 35 is when a man's sperm starts to become less effective. So, slightly less than full of life, I would say.

I came here to say this.

'Midlife' is not about how long do you live, it's about how advanced you are in the expectations of the social life script, after 'raving youth' and 'settled elderly'.

Some cultures have four-part scripts, some three -- not all two.

I once read a book about Ulyssean aging, IIRC. It described persons such as Thor Hyerdal who in essence started new lives (full of recognized accomplishment) near age 60.

From about 40, I found myself thinking more in terms of how much time I have left and what I can still realistically hope to achieve, rather than in terms of how long I've lived.

I was 43 when my father was diagnosed with a bad cancer that would kill him two years later (at 69).

Those things together triggered a lot of things that I think made up a mid life crisis, now I'm 48 and it seems to be getting better.

Yeah, this hits home. I'm only 28 but can feel my life becoming more and more predictable and stagnate. At the same time, I'm too afraid and money-conscious to make any bold changes (e.g., quit my job, start a business, go back to school, live in a van for a year, do something weird with my life). This is an incredible source of anxiety and depression.

I've started therapy and have made some progress. If I can become less anxious about money, I think I'll be able to find sustainable happiness. But I know this will be a lifetime struggle.

At 29 I took a year off everything and traveled. One thing I've learned in the decade+ since is that every year that goes by makes it harder to do. If you're feeling the itch just do it. You'll have a lot of years in your career so don't think you're missing out on anything -- assuming you're able to make the finances work.

Just realize that you can be fired at moment from your job and have trouble (if economy) to find a new one. You'll realize how fragile your current situation is, and going through a rough experience will be worth it (to figure out how to make your future more anti-fragile).

Of course most people go through it the hard way (firing, divorce, etc...) But I don't suggest you do it now, but if you are not saving any significant money from your current job you might as well just leave.

The way I think about stability is that it's actually how I can not stagnate. Stagnation comes from going around in circles trying to fix the same problems over and over again. Stability allows me to make incremental progress over a long period of time toward my dreams.

Love that you started therapy. Feel free to reach out to me (email in bio) if you want to chat about this in general.

Some people would suggest that you could work on meeting someone and starting a family. (So you can move on to the next struggle!) Preparing myself for this and figuring out how to renounce partying was in fact meaningful for me as I transitioned to my thirties. This clearly isn't for everyone though.

careful with therapy which ends with acceptance of wage labor (or other oppressive institutions which wind you back into wage labor), maybe think on that a bit given your skillset as an HN visitor

Yeah, we need hope, we need something to look forward to, we need something to be passionate about. In early life, we assume that a spouse and job and kids and a house will be just that. Once we get there (midlife or not), we often find it unsatisfying, so the "crisis" is to go looking again. From the outside, the person having the "crisis" already has the "perfect" life so it looks like foolishness.

The big takeaway for me was that expecting life to ring perfect based on my wisdom at 20 is pure silliness. I now know what I know, I can only go forward. So what gives me satisfaction and hope now. Then I (try to) execute on that.

I think generally these things might just be called existential crises, and it just so happens that people tend to experience one at around 40.

I've also been having one for the past 3 years (the tail of my 20s), which I've been kinda labeling my "quarter life crisis" (which isn't really mathematically right but seems to align with popular usage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis)