Most probably you have already heard about midlife crisis. Professionals from several sciences cannot find unique answer discuss almost 70 years, if i tis a part of normal psychological development, or it is because we live longer comparing to the past generation. Some of them think that it is social construct of western culture and most people do not face it. Whatever they will discover or confirm, there is a group of people that experience this period in their life.
This crisis is usually identified around 45, but i tis not a rule. Sometimes it appears earlier, sometimes it is not experienced at all. One of most important fact around many others, that vary according individual, is moment when we recognize, that live is final, and timely limited. If we are 40 and have a fortune that we will not suffer some serious disease or accident, most probably we are in the middle of our life or maybe we already passed it.
So, the plans, which we have postponed, and all what we would like to do or experience in life will increase its priority. Recognizing finality of life raise the pressure upon us, that there is no time for postponing. Hints like …when I will achieve this job position, …when I will earn enough money, …when the kids will grow up, is not working anymore.
When we reach this point in our life, there is large scale of possible reactions. The one is, where we will start working even harder to achieve intended goal sooner, but this will prolong period of postponing. The opposite reaction may be tendency to catchup what we have missed in past decades regardless what it does with our current life. And somewhere in between there are plenty of way how to deal with this period.
Of course, there is no only-correct way how to face this crisis and everybody needs to find the right way for himself. But good starting point may be searching for what is in our life firm, which values we consider as still valid. So, they were meaningful in the past and we want to keep them also for the future. When we discover them, we will gain something we can lean on. With such support we can explore what we have too much and/or what we lack and how to change it to be more satisfied. One perspective of this period could be feelings of sadness or anger of what we have lost. But we can also change point of view when we recognize, that we are „only“ in probable middle of our life. That it is not coming on the end of life and we still have some time to find what lacks and release what is not supportive. From this point of view this crisis could became a gift, for which we will be someday grateful to Life.