Fighting a mid-life crisis

“Your life is like a bad Bollywood movie on repeat,” a friend remarked recently, striking a nerve days after I turned 33. I love a good midlife crisis — so much so that I’ve had one every year since I turned 18. But halfway through my life, the urgency and sheer force of the recurring questions which trigger my crisis are taking a more existential twist. How many of my life goals are socialised constructs versus genuine desires? Do I even want what I think I want? Why am I no longer excited by the life experiences I thought would be the pinnacle of joy in my childhood?

Three decades sounds like a good enough time to figure out the kind of life one wants to live but I feel more lost because I’m unable to distinguish between socialised values versus my own, as well as the distraction of everyday life itself which doesn’t give us the time or the head space to construct the life we really want to live. When you rip apart all the fluff, what is life? It’s how you choose to spend time in your day. But what are we seeking to optimise if we want to structure our day better? Is it a career, relationship with God, family, friends, a higher purpose to make a social impact, or a balance between all of them?

For the longest time, I thought I knew the fundamentals of my long term, sustainable happiness or my life’s purpose. It’s three things: a growing, loving relationship with God; strong relationships with family and friends; and making a positive impact on society using my skills and privilege. While I genuinely believe these hold true, this is not how I’ve prioritised my life. Instead, I operated on auto-pilot, letting life take me where it wants to go. I prioritise: making a living by focusing on my day job, engaging in every new shiny object/idea to make a positive impact in society and indulging in daily pleasures which feed my body not my soul. The inability to live the life of my stated purpose makes me question whether that is my real purpose, even though those are the only things that have brought sustainable joy in my life.

The irony of all this deep thought is that I’m no longer living in the moment or enjoying the things I otherwise would simply because I’m doing so much that they become an obligation. I have also struggled with mental health in the past — depression and anxiety — so it’s difficult to separate where a healthy mid-life crisis ends and where unhealthy symptoms of depression and anxiety begin. So, where does one go from here?

First, take a deep breath. You haven not figured it out in three decades so you won’t figure this out in 30 minutes. Part of the joy of life is this journey of self-discovery and constant self-improvement versus unlocking the joy of an achievement or a goal, which brings momentary fulfilment. How about a conscious effort of trial and error? To try out multiple iterations of structuring your day and discover what feels right in reality versus theoretically or socially.

So, coming back full circle to the bad Bollywood movie on repeat, my immediate action is to nurture more time and head space to get out of my mental rut. I will seek to live in the moment versus in my head. I will have a bias for action versus wallowing in a thought loop. I will do my life-thinking in a contained space of time — say meditate for an hour a day. The rest of the time I’m going to focus on doing and trying new things. I will play with different life constructs, see what I enjoy and build my life around it. The only thing I don’t know: whether this self-awareness is coming 30 years too late or 30 years too early.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 9^th, 2020.

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