Happy Birthday, Bob

Interesting that the phrase “mid life crisis” didn’t enter the vernacular until as recent as 1970. This is because mid life crises typically happen around age 40 and require a 70-80 year life span if not more and until recently people didn’t live that long. The two things that have arisen most prominently out of the twentieth century for the developed world are longer life and recreational time. Even for the wealthy in the 1700s there was no weekend at the Hamptons or Spring Break in Cabo. Life happened slower.

Now it’s to the point that life does not happen fast enough and once we’ve raced to success and stability at 40 we’re suddenly confronted with our impending mortality and certain dissatisfactions of pleasure. A mid life crisis is just one more term for disillusionment.

And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’ve seen a number of my peers including myself undergo a similar disillusionment in a kind of (to steal John Mayer’s term from “Why Georgia”) “quarter life crisis” including bouts with depression, loss of desire for schooling and/or work, increasingly nihlistic and pleasure seeking attitudes and results all too often in a bitter cynicism and resentment that tries its very best to avoid being a vulnerable, sentimental human being.