I’ve talked to some friends about being 40 and this idea of mid-life crisis. Through our teenage years, we are learning how to live. Learning to be an adult. Then, magically, we are one. Or so we are labeled. Our 20s are for exploring what that means to us. And while we will be in flux till our last days, around 30 we begin to reflect and settle into a personality that doesn’t shift majorly from year to year. At 40 we have been somewhat the same person, doing essentially the same thing, usually feeling pretty confident in our so-called adulthood for a quarter of our life.
Lots of things can cause a mid-life crisis, but I think this is the big one. Not being happy, not being content, at where we’ve ended up. Reflecting on lost or abandon dreams, comparing ourselves to the optimistic, youthful us of decades past. Remembering a time before our bodies didn’t hurt or where it repaired itself in days instead of months. The crisis comes from having not reflected more often, or perhaps, at all, in the last decade or more. Suddenly, one realizes they have just been sleepwalking through their lives. And whether it be turning 40, or something else, they awaken with a bang.
I feel awake all the time, perhaps to my detriment. The whole reason I’m writing this is I feel a tug, now 41-years-old. It’s no crisis, but a…recalibration. I’m not the same as I was a decade ago. So, really looking at my priorities, adjusting goals, and making a change to be the best Dean I can be is imperative. The one thing I haven’t mentioned is death. Turning 40 is the beginning of the dissolution of immortality. Over the hill. Past one’s prime. Past the peak of one’s life. It’s where we realize some goals we might have once had, are either impossible or just something that’s beyond our desires. Giving up these goals is understanding we do not have what we once did. Every opportunity.