Date:         Mon, 3 Feb 1997 00:15:42 EST
From: kryptonite for the superego? <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Organization: No, Just a Runaway Id
Subject:      Re: FILLER: Mid-Life Crisis?

[just a few thoughts, without having read most of the postings on this...]

Mid-life crisis?  This phrase indicates that in the midst of life, we
find a crisis?  (Only one?  I wonder if we're talking about the same
life here?  I mean, the one I've been issued seems to have quite a
large stock of crises, in various sizes, colors, and other styles,
some quite ill-suited to my tastes.)

being cautious, I delved into the OAD and found

    crisis 1. a decisive time 2. a time of acute difficulty or danger

(incidentally, the OAD proclaims middle-aged to be an adjective, meaning
of middle age, approximately between forty-five and sixty-five.)

So at the crux of life, one might discover acute difficulties, even
danger, or that axle upon which the millwheel of the gods grinds and
shudders as the blood, sweat and tears of humanity grease the
bearings--a decision!

Sounds right to me.  One might even consider that what one person calls
a molehill, another quite rightly considers a mere fleabite, and yet one
more as an outcropping of the Rockies, high in Colorado...

Oh, heck.  Why don't you write a story about your favorite crisis?  And
then one about the crisis that someone else faced?  And then there's...

To help you with finding a crisis to write about, I'll toss in these
quotes relating to the mid-life passage/crisis.

From Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life by Gail Sheehy, ISBN
ISBN 0-3-553-10306-7, Chapter 17, p. 350.

Setting Off On the Midlife Passage

    "The middle of the thirties is literally the midpoint of life.  The
halfway mark.  No gong rings, of course.  But twinges begin.  Deep down
a change begins to register in those gut-level perceptions of safety and
danger, time and no time, aliveness and stagnation, self and others.  It
starts with a vague feeling...
    _I have reached some sort of meridian in my life.  I had better take
a survey, reexamine where I have been and reevaluate how I am going to
spend my resources from now on.  Why am I doing all this?  What do I
really believe in?_
    Underneath this vague feeling is the fact, as yet unacknowledged,
that there is a down side to life, a back of the mountain, and that _I
have only so much time before the dark to find my own truth._
    As such thoughts gather thunder, the continuity of the life cycle is
interrupted.  They usher in a decade that can be called, in the deepest
sense, the Deadline Decade.  Somewhere between 35 and 45 if we let
ourselves, most of us will have a full-out authenticity crisis."

    Some of the components they list:

    1. Seeing the Dark at the End of the Tunnel
        "...as we reach our prime, we also see there is a place where it
finishes."
    2. Change in Time Sense
        "...We have stumbled onto that apostrophe in time between the
end of growing up and the beginning of growing old."
        "...All our notions of the future need to be rebalanced around
the idea of time left to live."
    3. Change in Sense of Aliveness versus Stagnation
        "...Time diffusion is a deeper malaise that stems from our
sudden, drastic lack of trust in the future and an unwillingness to
believe there is anything to look forward to."
    4. Change in Sense of Self and Others
        kids growing up, parents dying, and friends complaining of aches
and pains...
    5.  De-Illusioning the Dream
        "You must give up believing that all the riches of life will
come from reaching the goals of your idealized self."
        "If your ideal self _has_ been achieved, what happens after the
dream comes true?"
    6.  Groping Toward Authenticity
        "As our distorted glimpses of the dark side grow into
convictions and the dream disappoints our magical hopes, _any_ role we
have chosen seems too narrow, _any_ life structure too confining."

    and (p. 359)
    "Who's afraid of growing up?  Who isn't?  For if and when we do
begin the process of reexamining all that we think and feel and stand
for, in the effort to forge an identity that is authentically ours and
ourse alone, we run into our own resistance.  There is a moment--an
immense and precarious moment--of stark terror.  And in that moment most
of us want to retreat as fast as possible because to go forward means
facing a truth we have suspected all along:
    "We stand alone."

    (p. 361)
    "What is disassembling is that narrow self we have thus far put
together in a form tailored to please the culture and other people."
    "...The unspoken promise was, if we did a good job and stayed within
that straight and narrow form, we would be liked and rewarded and live
forever."
    "The shock of this turning point is to discover that the promise was
an illusion.  That narrow, innocent self is indeed dying, must die, in
order to make room for the fully expanded self who will take in all our
parts, the selfish, scared, and cruel along with the expansive and
tender--the 'bad' along with the 'good.'  No matter how shattering is
this collision with our suppressed and destructive impulses, the
capacity for renewal within each human spirit is nothing short of
amazing."

tink

(when you floss your psyche with introspection, you'll wonder where
the yelling goes...)