Who came up with the phrase, “mid life crisis” and how did they define it?

Having found all sorts of definitions and musings on the phrase, here is what I have come to define this malady of man called “middle aged”.  A mid life crisis is supposed to be a turning point or a change of direction in our life, for better or for worse.

As I look in the mirror, getting ready for work every morning, I have come to the conclusion that my mid section is in crisis.  A waist is a terrible thing to mind.

But I digress.

As of this writing, I’m approaching 50 years of age.  My maternal grandparents lived to their mid sixties.  My paternal grandparents lived to their early nineties.  If I were to average their life spans out in order to guesstimate mine, then I might reasonably assume that I will live to around the age of 80, meaning that I’ve already passed my mid-life point.

However, I’ve gotten a kick observing those who are obviously smack-dab in the middle of their lives.  Over the years, nothing has made me smile, or even laugh out loud, more than the sight of a man who is obviously going through a mid life crisis.  We’ve all seen examples of this:  Over weight, middle aged guys buying sports cars, trying to look twenty years younger and chasing women who really are.

That’s the stereotypical view of a mid life crisis.  The one that makes others laugh.

At first, I thought that I blew right on by any mid life crisis pretty much unscathed.  Upon some reflection, though, I realized that, by circumstance, my mid life crisis happened at the tale end of my fortieth year.  I have also learned that my “crisis” took on the more common form of being faced with my own mortality and wondering if my life has been what it was supposed to be.

The jarring realization that I wasn’t going to live forever came with the death of a good friend from high school.  At his funeral, the minister read the famous poem entitled, “The Dash Between The Years”. by Linda Ellis.  I won’t quote the poem here but it talks about how we spend the years between our birth and death that is represented very simply by the hyphen that separates those years on one’s grave stone.
 

The perfect storm of my friend’s death, the poem that was read at his funeral converging at the midpoint of my life provoked a lot of introspection.  In reflecting on my life, I realized that I had often let life get in the way of living.  It felt as though I went from one crisis or event to another without stopping and smelling the roses or to take the time to figure out all of the lessons to be learned from each of those events.

I then began to observe others of my generation.  To paraphrase Thoreau, they were living lives of quiet desperation, going to the grave with their still unsung songs held within them.  They’ve lived lives that someone else, or the circumstances of life, has forced them to luve.  They literally haven’t lived their own life. 

Unfortunately, when they came to that realization, many of these people destroyed the lives they had by chasing another life that also isn’t really “them”.  They tried to fill the God-shaped void in their hearts with things and people like sports cars, cosmetic surgery, and, even more sadly, “new loves”. 

Or, equally as bad, they withdrew further away from the real “them” and continued their lives of “quiet desperation”.  It’s like Ruth Gordon’s character said in the movie, “Harold and Maude”:  “A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they’re not dead, really.  They’re just backing away from life.”

I wish that I could tell you that, immediately after my friend’s funeral, that I grasped all the purposes of my life and quickly began pursuing them.  Not immediately.  I did, however, began the gradual path of realizing my purpose and digesting the many lessons of my life, trying to make sure that they weren’t wasted.

In recent years, I’ve taken those lessons to the next level and have begun re-charting the course of my life.  Writing these articles is but one aspect of that new course.  As Soren Kierkegaard said, “Now, with the help of God, I can become myself.”

I’m sorry, but you Porsche dealers don’t need to bother calling me.  My first wife (still the only beauty I want in my life) and I are enjoying our SUV, thank you very much!  In fact, we intend to make sure that there are a lot of highway dashes between the dates on our tombstones when our gig is up. 

We will live life to the fullest and die only once.