Midlife Crisis

Owl looked at him, and wondered whether to push him off the tree; but feeling that he could always do it afterwards, he tried once more to find out what they were looking for.

My friends-and-relations are, politely I think, feigning surprise upon learning I am having my midlife crisis.  Feigning, I say, because they could not actually be surprised to hear of this.  No surprise:  I am in midlife and in the midst of great change.  No surprise:  many of them are too.  Still, they are polite types, mostly, these friends-and-relations of mine, a regular parliament of Owls, and so they look at me, owlishly, waiting to hear more.  So here's more:

Seek elsewhere for your Roman holiday, dear reader, this is no Hollywood-style midlife crisis, nary a sports car or teenage girl for me.  No, this is the quiet, desperate, internal crisis that, in some sense, actually defines "mid-life," because it is prompted by the realization that whatever has already been achieved is in some critical respects not enough, and that what remains to be done is, in the nature of things, the bit you haven't ever been able to do.

This sense of crisis, which is nothing more nor less than an existential crisis (see here for Wikipedia's cogent and mercifully brief definition of same, though note that Wikipedia's entry on midlife crisis does not, for the most part, describe my condition), began a few years ago.  I was working at Fortis Bank, an institution that can only be described as hapless, and it was winter in Amsterdam, so I suppose crisis of some sort was inevitable.  At any rate, it came to me that my work lacked meaning, and this, and the gray weather, set off a wider questioning of Meaning of and in my life.  This initial spark--i.e., the basic issues I had with working on systems designed to stabilize banks that even at the time appeared not to value stability (and which in retrospect quite clearly were not pursuing it)--influenced much of my subsequent thinking on this topic: as most of my readers are well aware, I was inspired by this experience not to search for a new way of living but simply to try to find a new career.

As much as I did and still do need to find a new calling, this crisis goes much deeper than that, nor, I have realized, will the discovery of "meaningful" work guarantee that these deeper matters are addressed.  And yet there are clear parallels between the process of finding meaningful work and that of establishing a foundation of meaning in my life overall.  In both cases, I feel, the precondition exists for a new approach to things.  I have a sense of having followed my own lead quite long enough.  I've steered a good course, in work as in life, and brought myself many a fine thing.  I am little acquainted with regret.  And yet, and yet, there's this sense that, the Steward of Gondor having done his best, it is time for the Coming of the King.

*****

I talk much of meaning, above, but I am inclined to think that the way out, for me at least, is not so much a matter of finding meaning, not a question of building an existential framework to Make Sense of Things, but rather of finding a better way to deal with my insistence on assigning meaning as part of my more general drive to establish control over my environment.  I live in a beneficent environment, an easy one, certainly a non-threatening one, and I always have:  control of it has not often been required.  And besides, control has its limits.

I am increasingly inclined to believe that what is required instead of, or at the very least as a complement to, control is acceptance.  Acceptance does not presuppose a search for meaning--one does not need starting principles in order to determine direction when accepting things, as one very much does if the goal is to control them.  One needs a certain commitment to passivity, a willingness to suspend judgment, the ability to coexist with uncertainty and incompleteness.  In other words, one needs exactly what I ain't got.  And so we return to "midlife," a point about which to turn oneself.

*****

Let me be clear about one thing:  however uncomfortable I may be with the challenge of midlife, I like being middle aged.  I listened to The Final Cut the other day.  I have always loved this album, but now I get it.  That alone is worth the price of admission, whatever that price will eventually turn out to be.

My wife, with whom I intend to share all of this crisis as well as all of whatever crises may follow, comments that I shouldn't be sure this is "the" midlife one.  Ever the statistician, she points out that we are living longer on average.  Not a comforting thought for either of us given the context.  Still, we face the future with optimism.