Everyday I wake up, I go through something akin to a mid-life crisis. Then I get over it. I think it comes from a feeling of complete lack of control in your life. When you're a man, especially, you grow being told that you're supposed to have a plan, take charge, be a leader, a provider, bring home the bacon, slay dragons, leap tall buildings, etc, etc, etc...
Then after ten years of marriage and family you realize that you've not done any of that... and you wonder if something's wrong... I think those who succumb to those feelings lose their ability to see longterm, perhaps because they made no longterms plans.
I think it also comes about when a man reaches all his goals, and ambitions, only to find that they're not all they're cracked up to be.
--Ray
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I'm not slow; I'm special. (Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)
I think it is when a man realizes he has to get used to the idea he is "old" now and yet he is still wanting to be "young", that if his lifespan is to follow that of his own father's, he has well passed over the hump.
Freedom from responsibility and worries, having to answer to people, having to think about anyone else... basically, the desire to go back to when they were in their prime physically but have the street smarts and wisdom they have now.
The desire to go back and do things differently.
Most men are taught to be very analytical, and I bet most of us play that game of quantum possibilities in our mind from time to time... the "if only I had made this decision, what would my life be like now..." The older we get, the more we do it until we reach a point where we realize it doesn't really matter any more anyway, and then we start falling down the other edge of the bell curve to where we just become cantekorous old farts...
I don't know, but I think that when a man is up there near the top of the bell curve of life analysis versus time, realizing that his ultimate fate is to start the slide down to being an old fart, if the "mid-life ponderings" are turned into the situation of being a "crisis", then it may be the result of looking for a way to free oneself from various forms of bondage, real or perceived, spiritual or temporal, and more than not results in a worse situation for the man who does not get his head back on straight. Selfishness versus selflessness is the real issue.
IMHO.
I don't know how much of it I say is the result of no goals or having met one's "life" goals. I think we sometimes place too much emphasis on "life" goals. My dad worked up to the day before he died (in fact he died while out in the yard doing yard work), so he never got to enjoy any "life" goals of retirement. I think it is more aspiring for the wrong things and feeling like you've gotten passed by because your life's experience isn't what you think it should be, particularly when comparing it to someone else.
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It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a "salad dressing dude."
Cat, you hit the nail on the head there. particularly when comparing it to someone else. I am completely out of debt... but I still have a bunch of kids...youngest is 4 so I don't see the end of the tunnel.... I have buddies I graduated with that are getting ready to retire. I'll probably end up dead on one of my operatory floors. If I didn't compare myself with others, I'd be better off.
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no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing... the truth of God will go forth till it has penetrated every website, sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the great Jehovah shall say the work is done
Maybe so. I probably had a little one. I didn't buy a Vette and I didn't have an affair with a 19 year-old Hooters waitress.
When I got out of the military, I really didn't know what to do for the rest of my life. I loved my career in the military. I just got tired of being away from home so much, so when the opportunity came for an early out, I converted all my retirement to a personal plan and got out.
I obtained a real estate license and did some investing. Hated it. it seemed like a meaningless pursuit of material wealth.
For some reason, I developed this conviction that I had to do something meaningful and significant with my next career. So now I'm an elementary school teacher.
I don't know why it's so important for me to have a career I think is meaningful. Most of my friends are satisfied just to have a job that will enable them to support their families. That's my first priority also, but this insistence on meaningfulness is a really close second. Maybe that's part of a mid-life crisis for me
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The ability to qualify for, receive, and act on personal revelation is the single most important skill that can be acquired in this life. - Julie Beck
BTW, Roper, if it ever comes to a choice between the two, I think that there would be much less fallout from buying the Vette.
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
I think that all of us reach different crossroads in life and wonder where we are going and why. I think for some this gets more pronounced at mid life because we have the funds and the freedom to act out in strange ways. I think the gospel tempers this somewhat. Making some changes can be good. How many of us are actually doing what we wanted to do back in highschool or college. My life has turned out completely different. I originally wanted to be in the FBI and was going to study criminology. Then as a senior in highschool I decided that I wanted to study business after taking an accounting and marketing class then either get an MBA or go to law school. I did get the BS in Business but when I was in college I did the ROTC thing with the Airforce but then ultimately decided that being a Naval Officer looked like more fun. So I took all the tests, physical, physical fitness test etc but then I got accepted to graduate school and decided to go that route. Tried that for a while and then stopped because my three year old was crying that she never saw me because I was at work all day and in school in the evenings. That and the one hour commute each way was killing me. I toyed with becoming a teacher, took the CBEST and got my card so I could substitute teach and looked into a credential program. Dropped that idea after I looked at the state of education and thought about if I could work under the system or not. Then I looked at taking the LSAT again. All this time I was working in the family tractor, farming, and property rental business not wanting to get sucked in like five generations of my family have done. So I kept working at that, quit for a week once but came back. Then I studied martial arts for a couple years thinking I could become an instructor on the side when my old wrestling injury in my right knee took me out of the game right before my half black belt test. Then I got into scuba diving and thought about becoming a part time instructor in that because the money was actually pretty decent for a side job. Figured out that then my hobby would become something I didn't want to do because now it was work and so I'm still here working the business with my brother now and enjoying it most days. So I've basically had a dozen or so of these midlife crisises. There is a tendency to look back and think, "If I had done this or that I would be doing this instead of that". But what is the point in all that. I have a great wife and three kids with one on the way, almost no debt, a roof over my head, and enough free time to be able to do fun stuff with the family. It makes it easier if I keep in mind that in the end it really won't matter.
Roper, why did you go into the military? Was your desire to do something meaningful part of that choice too, or did it emerge after you retired?
Long answer here, Bok.
Prior to the first Gulf War, I attended a priesthood fireside on a Saturday evening where a man I much admired spoke. This man had served a mission, served as a fire base commander in Viet Nam, had married in the temple and raised a large family, had been successful in business, had served as a representative in the state legislature, and was then serving as our Stake President. He was highly respected in the community.
His remarks focused on three concepts that every young man should consider:
1. Serve God. Begin by serving an honorable full-time mission. 2. Serve your family. Begin by marrying in the temple. 3. Serve your country in some way. That might be military service for some. It might mean regularly volunteering at a community center for some (he listed many things.)
I was so inspired by his remarks that I fasted and prayed all the next day about how I could be of service. On Monday morning, I put my educational plans on hold and went to the recruiter and enlisted in the Air Force. After five years, I had finished college a received a commission as an officer. I have no doubt that I was inspired to join the military, even if the decision seemed compulsive to others (friends and family.) I have always felt that my military service was meaningful. I will always consider it an honor to have served.
After I retired, the desire to do something meaningful increased, probably because I wasn't engaged in that kind of service anymore--I was focused on building material wealth through real estate investments.
After my misguided and thankfully brief venture into that world, and having successfully avoided the lure of fast cars and blonde temptresses, I'm pretty sure I've arrived safe and sound where I should be.
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The ability to qualify for, receive, and act on personal revelation is the single most important skill that can be acquired in this life. - Julie Beck
Good for you Roper! My pa was in the military in the middle of the Viet nam era, though he was an officer in the ROTC and never got shipped to Nam. He got out as soon as he could so he could be with his family rather than shipped off somewhere. Though ironically he ended up spending a lot of time traveling due to his work... so I'm not sure it made much of a difference. :)
I respect folks who serve, but My father was very wary of any of his sons serving in the military based upon his experiences, which he doesn't talk about much... he's not a very talkative person in general. He always sort of disapproved of the idea for us... (he had six sons) but never explained why. I had a feeling it was due to the exposure to the baser tendencies of man...
I try to compensate not having served by being a pesky nut to everyone I meet.
--Ray
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I'm not slow; I'm special. (Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)
I think it takes a certain sort of person to enjoy military life. BTW, as far as mid life crisis, if I ever have one, I'm going to buy a lot of computer stuff
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
