The Midlife Crisis

[Sundae]

I really loved Fried Green Tomatoes and Daisy Fay, but after that she seemed to get unbearably twee... Maybe she always was and I was too young to recognise it? Lots of God in the ones I read recently too. I'm interested in your opinion.

Cider House Rules was pretty good from what I remember (was that the book where a man was looking for a woman with an aperture as small as a mouse's ear?) I prefer A Prayer for Owen Meany though. I heard a recording of Irving doing Owen Meany's voice a while back - it was as I imagined it.

[Shawnee123]

Well, I wouldn't call Fannie's books great literature, but they are amusing. I liked the recurring characters. A little too much God for me, but...oh, which one was it where God was that old lady in that house? I don't remember. I liked them, in a amusing story kind of way.

I had just seen Cider House Rules on TV a couple weekends ago. I am anxious to see if there are major differences between the movie and book.

[Juniper]

I read "Standing in the Rainbow" but apparently didn't think much of it, because I can't remember much about it...I think it had something to do with traveling singing families and radio stations out in the boonies.

Oh and yes, I've read the book and watched the movie too. I really liked the movie because it has two awesome actresses in it, Kathy Bates and Jessica Tandy, couldn't go wrong. Loved the look on the hubby's face when he came home to find his wife all wrapped up in plastic.

[Ibby]

Yeesh.
Remind me never to venture into your old people threads.
not for a long time at least.

*shiver*

at least ive got a good twenty-odd years before i get there.
if i get that far.

[Undertoad]

You're in a different crisis stage. Psychologist Erik Erikson postulated eight stages of psychosocial development in life, each with its own crisis:

Infancy (Birth - 18 months)
-- Psychosocial Crisis: Trust vs. Mistrust
Muscular-anal stage (1 1/2 - 3 Years)
-- Psychosocial Crisis: Autonomy vs. Shame & doubt
Play Age (3-6 Years)
-- Psychosocial Crisis: Initiative vs. Guilt
School Age (7-10 Years)
-- Psychosocial Crisis: Industry vs. Inferiority
Adolescence (10-17 Years)
-- Psychosocial Crisis: Identity vs. Role Confusion (thus "identity crisis" -UT)
Young Adulthood (18-40 years)
-- Psychosocial Crisis: Intimacy vs. Isolation
Middle Adulthood (40-65 Years)
-- Psychosocial Crisis: Generativity vs. Stagnation
Late Adulthood (from 65 years)
-- Psychosocial crisis: Integrity vs Despair

[Ibby]

Actually, I havent been all identity crisis-y for a while. I'm pretty set when it comes to that, for now, I think.
I'm actually moving more into the next crisis, lately, i think.

[warch]

Sounds like you are on the right track Juniper.

Mr. and Ms Warch are 43 and 46 respectively. And it has been a wild ride since around 38-39. Big changes and new chapters. We're still together, but watched many others separate as they took on new paths.

Ours involved moving across country, me in school, him making a big identity heavy and uncertain job change, dealing with health things once taken for granted and the deaths of peers from both illness and bad choices. We want to keep alert, keep learning and exploring. Travel is what we want more of, next. The raw perception that comes from a new place, but with our secure home base to come home to.

I think its an exciting time. Every decade should get more interesting.
Griff's and Tony's comments made me think of this lovely poem by Mary Oliver.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

[xoxoxoBruce]

I like that poem... a lot. Thank you.

[Juniper]

I love it too! Thank you for posting it.

And BTW Shawnee, of course you can call me Junie.

[Griff]

Very nice warch.

[regular.joe]

The poem was outstanding. Really. Thank you.

I got out of the Army in '93 and spent 6 years out. Got back in in '99. One good thing about the Army is that every couple to three years I move on to something a little different. I haven't been stuck in a rut professionally. I'm 41 now, have about 17 or so years total in. Most guys are looking forward to getting out at 20, I volunteered for an airborne slot and am changing my career path in a big way. I like it. As far as doing something more exciting to wake my old butt up, it's hard to to top dodging bullets and jumping out of aircraft. Maybe my "crisis" will come when I finally get out of this racket. Mrs. Joe thinks I already had mine, but that is another story.

Juniper, I don't know why they call it a crisis. Get out, challenge yourself, use all that life experience for something good. With all the factors that conspire to keep us healthy and alive a good 20-30 years longer then people 100 to 200 years ago, I say go for it and enjoy the ride. I bet it doesn't end up where you think it will now, just like when you were 20.

[DanaC]

I hit a major age-crisis round about the age of 29/30. I was obsessed with age for about 4 years. I'd watch old programmes on TV and try to imagine what I was doing when they first aired. Sometimes the sense of loss, of being dislocated from 'home' was quite profound. I also had to know the ages of actors. Whenever a cool female character was in a programme, I needed to know how old she was. If she was younger than me, I felt cut off from her, older than me and I'd feel a sense of relief. Bizarre huh?

Thankfully, I got over that lol. I am quite comfortable with my age and where I am at. Most of the time. Except when depression hits. Hell, don't we all carry our shadows with us?

[Shawnee123]

I love that poem, warch.

I'll take this opportunity to add my favorite quote, words I try to live by, from one of the coolest people who ever lived, imho.

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor
do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is
no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
-Helen Keller

[SteveDallas]

Originally Posted by Ibram

Yeesh.
Remind me never to venture into your old people threads.
not for a long time at least.

Perhaps this is my cue to let out the comment I stifled before... "Don't you own a comb??"

Originally Posted by Ibram

at least ive got a good twenty-odd years before i get there.
if i get that far.

Mrs. Dallas has defined middle age as "10 years past wherever you are now."

As the age of 40, previously some mythical beast, now begins to resolve itself with increasing detail on the horizon, I think about certain things.

I think about whether I screwed up my career choices in my youth. I think about the fact that it's really too late to go back and change. I think about the fact that I don't want to go "back" (to greater hands-on techie involvement) in my career, and I can't go "forward" (to greater administrative responsibility) without increasing my "people skills," a prospect that makes me physically nauseous. I think about my great eagerness to see what my brilliant children will do with their lives, coupled with fear (borne out by observation) that I'm daily bequeathing my own psychoses to them. I think about whether I'm one day going to crack and give in to my desire to disappear off the radar screen and just.. go do something else. I think about whether one day I'll give in to my sometimes overwhelming desire to just stay in bed, indefinitely. I'm thinking about whether anything I do or have ever done will have any lasting impact after I'm gone.

Call it a mid-life crisis if you will.

[warch]

I think 40-50s is profound because you really start to not know your physical self or are forced to relearn it-- those things that were so familiar...what you've always thought of yourself- your hair, the shape of your face, even your height, your strength, what you can and can't do--- is really morphing. You catch that glimpse of yourself or see a pic and think, dang! (I unsuccessfully attempted to execute a cartwheel earlier this summer...yikes! Luckily the grass was soft.)
Like other women I know, I look back pictures of me at 15, 25, 35 when I felt uncomfortable, fat or squatty or plain and think what a shame I didn't realize how perfectly fine I was at the time--- and I am working on realizing that right now, too, as I am learning the patterns of my face wrinkles!