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