IMO the term is so diluted as to be meaningless.

Burnout isn't a mid-life crisis.

Changing your career doesn't necessarily mean you're having a mid-life crisis.

Changing your personal circumstances doesn't necessarily imply a midlife crisis.

Every definition I know of includes a sense of existential angst, a feeling of regret, of lost potential, of questioning identity, of a fear or mortality.

But simply realizing you're unhappy in your life or circumstances and want to change them isn't itself indicative of a mid-life crisis by any meaningful definition I'm aware of.

Yeah I think everything in your comment is pretty understandable and I probably wouldn’t trust someone who claims to have not experienced nearly all of those feelings to some extent.

Hadn’t heard that list of “symptoms” before but… I guess that means I am in a midlife crisis at 39.

I think it’s when those feelings completely break you that you’re in the crisis stage.

The lost potential is a key one I have seen. The idea that your youth is in the rear view mirror and that you didn't do all the things you thought you would do.

I was in my 40s and starting thinking more in terms of how much time I had left rather than what I wanted to do at some unspecified "later". I also had young kids and a depressed jobless wife, so I wasn't completely free to do what I wanted and felt trapped. Then my father died pretty young, from a cruel cancer, and that amplified it all.

> The idea that your youth is in the rear view mirror and that you didn't do all the things you thought you would do.

Youth is wasted on the young. It’s such a shame.

> Every definition I know of includes a sense of existential angst, a feeling of regret, of lost potential, of questioning identity, of a fear of mortality.

Oh, then that one started for me around 30. I've successfully managed to bottle up those thoughts for now, which is probably why I'm facing a mother of all burnouts right now.

A midlife crisis is quitting your desk job to sell ice creams on the beach in the Caribbean. Getting to the point of doing it, not just thinking about it.

I thought it is dumping wife of 20 years for silly blonde and driving red convertible one bought with use of shark loan because “you need to have it because you always wanted it” even if you couldn’t afford it.

It's the same thing. But it doesn't have to be as destructive or ultimately short-lived as that. It might an opportunity to radically change some things you have taken for granted your entire life.

Well shit - adding another potentiality to my list...

"Studies indicate that some cultures may be more sensitive to this phenomenon than others; one study found that there is little evidence that people undergo midlife crises in Japanese and Indian cultures, raising the question of whether a mid-life crisis is mainly a cultural construct."

I thought this was interesting.

You might like this article about penis stealing witches:

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-geogra...

And this one:

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-crazy-like...

Japanese salarymen often undergo a crisis when they retire and suddenly find themselves with tons of time and nothing to do. Not exactly midlife, but it's of a similar vein.

That’s when they go into politics.

It means you'll never be 18 or 23 or 30 or 35 again. The youth that you took for granted is gone forever and time will march with you until your death. Death may be maybe be 2 years from now or 40 years from know, fully knowing that you body will start failing. Even if you have 40 years, not all of them will be good years, especially the last ones. Once you are gone, that's it.

So, not for naught? Seriously, we’re social creatures that live for others. You can have 40 good years serving the next generation, building wealth for them and sharing in their joys.

I’m sensing this strange notion in older generations where they absolutely refuse to let go and insist on keeping their youth and the spotlight to no or some avail. Technology is getting better and making people hold on for longer but I think it leads to your kind of statement that life ain’t that great unless we’re out there crushing it all the time.

I guess it fits nicely with the declining notion that having children isn’t worth it either.

>that life ain’t that great unless we’re out there crushing it all the time.

Where in the hell did you get that from? I wish I hadn't wasted 20+ years of my youth working so hard.

>I guess it fits nicely with the declining notion that having children isn’t worth it either.

Dunno where you got that from either. My kids are the best thing that happened to me. Are you projecting or something?

Seriously?

> all the time you spent improving yourself and building wealth will be for naught, at least for you

There’s meaning in that work if you accept that it’ll have lasting effects beyond you.

> It means you'll never be 18 or 23 or 30 or 35 again. The youth that you took for granted is gone forever and time will march with you until your death

Your youth was taken for granted if you don’t think it added up to you being able to provide for a family.

I’m just trying to find meaning in the mundane, not trying to preach. This view that being alive and healthy and able to raise a family isn’t enough is always disheartening.

Anyways, that’s my interpretatio. Or projection.

>There’s meaning in that work if you accept that it’ll have lasting effects beyond you.

Read what I said, "it will all be for naught, at least for you." Meaning all that time spent learning things and gaining knowledge and wealth won't matter for you because you'll be 6 feet under. It's along the lines of Jobs' quote, "you'll be the richest man in the cemetery." He was 56 when he died, how many years until you are 56? Probably not as many as you'd like.

>I’m just trying to find meaning in the mundane, not trying to preach. This view that being alive and healthy and able to raise a family isn’t enough is always disheartening.

I dunno where you got that from what I said. It's enough, it's great, it will be all over real soon because of the march of time. It's all for naught because we'll be worm food.

You completely misinterpreted what I said, you pretty much came up with the opposite.

Funnily enough this is a sentiment Ted Kaczynski pushed in his manifesto. That technology has replaced the drive for power in individuals to support themselves, because it has become so easy, so people try to find other means to fill the power principal. This can be social causes or political ones, or in your example, trying to hold onto youth for as long as possible. To be in denial of the reality of themselves.

There is some truth to it but I also feel like it is a far too pessimistic take on the issue.

I’ve got parents on both sides that are too busy going on cruises and vacations and only call us for the good times, so yea I can be pessimistic these days.

Friends and siblings though have been coming through like champs during these hard times.

>Seriously, we’re social creatures that live for others. You can have 40 good years serving the next generation, building wealth for them and sharing in their joys.

Speak for yourself; I sincerely have no interest in deliberately serving humanity. We're by far the dumbest and most conceited lifeform on this planet, and even ignoring that I find serious interactions with humans to be an utter hellscape of drama and problems I can and will do without.

When I'm gone, that's it. My blood ends with me. I refuse to leave a legacy behind. If there's anything left, whoever is there to witness can pick it all apart as they please. I don't care because I'm dead, after all.

> building wealth for them

Maybe not the best idea if you mean material wealth beyond staving off being poor. I know its all good intentions, but it more often ends up in spoiled entitled brats than it doesn't. People simply need a bit of struggle to stay humble and nice human beings, not too much but sweeping the road ahead of kids too well is one of the worst things a parent can do.

But its true this is US forum, so in that case one needs to build massive wealth just to send kids to university or have safety net for any kind of bigger health issues in family.

I agree though with kids being great for such a crisis, they give more purpose in life than anything else, give depth to otherwise often rather shallow life. Its like a computer game, playing on easiest difficulty (no kids) will make you progress faster and easier, but that doesn't translate well into overall worthiness of experience. Plus seeing your little ones play, having fun at 100% or grokking new stuff is such a nice heartwarming experience that it could melt a glacier or two, good luck getting such a kick elsewhere (and I do quite a bit of extreme sports so can compare a bit).

It's what people say they suffer when they made bad decisions for decades and figured out they missed the good part(s), happens a lot to people who sacrifice everything to climb the corporate ladder or focus too much on work or other artificial goals. Not everyone goes through it