It came as a surprise to me that the midlife crisis is something of a myth and the less time I’ve got left the happier I’ll apparently become.
It’ll also be news to many 50-something people I know, some of whom, besides still supporting school and university-aged children at home, are also caring for ageing parents and all of the heartbreaking decisions that can entail.
While it’s true that as I get older I cut myself more time for simple pleasures (a long morning walk in the winter sun; an occasional lunch with mates or the latest Netflix on some nights when I should probably be writing) I also feel more anxious than ever about whether I’m using properly what’s left in the glass.
Some friends in their late 40s and 50s have claimed to me that they are “post-aspirational” – beyond the point where they are compelled by the next publicly recognisable achievement, accolade or contract, and are more concerned with super balances and plans for beyond 55. They say they no longer hanker for greater success. I don’t believe most of them – mainly because they are also writing bestselling novels or playing with new startups or renovating another house.
I get it. Ageing motivates me to strive with ever greater enthusiasm and, yes, urgency, to be better at the things that are important to me. They are (in approximate order of priority) caring for family and dog(s), advocacy for the causes I have passion for, being a better friend and writing – an end in itself that is my way of making sense of the world, as intrinsic to my path through life as oxygen, food and ... Netflix.
When I wrote just there that age “motivates me to strive ...”, it’s actually somewhat more complex. Or simple. It’s posterity or the ever more potent desire for legacy, really, that drives me to want to get better at what I do. Mortality’s chilly breath on the back of neck urges me on. I’m not alone. When they get to their late 40s and early 50s women and men speak more openly than ever I’ve heard people in their 20s or 30s about what mark they’ll leave behind. Some are anxious to the point of personal crisis about it.
I was talking to a friend about all this the other day. I said that having decided a decade ago to quit traditional full-time employment to pursue other interests (or compulsions), I had no choice but to make what I do work.
She replied, “Yeah – and even if you wanted to turn back, that option is no longer open to you. It’s too late.”
I hadn’t thought about it like that. It was a disconcerting truth, a moment of stark realisation when you come to accept that it’s now or never, a one-way street, the only exit at ... the end.
Fear of failure is a powerful propellant that, even at my age (when I’m apparently supposed to be relaxed about knocking on the door of a future where my big successes are past, when I won’t be able to digest corn, make it to Friday lunch or walk 10 kilometres without second thought let alone be more than 500 metres from a bathroom) still makes it impossible to contemplate downsizing, donning the slippers and lighting the fire.
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare I might expect (touch wood, jinx, throws salt over shoulder) to live into my mid-80s. They’re not bad numbers: plenty of time to listen better, engage in a few random acts of kindness, push the causes I believe in and write some stuff of lasting importance. There’s still time to do it all better and better.
The numbers, of course, also have a way of focusing the mind on the big what next?.
These days conversations with mates are often punctuated with contemplations about how we’d ideally live out late adulthood. We are ever mindful of having made agonising decisions under the pressure of crisis for our parents, when they are no longer able to decide for themselves, to leave, senile and frail, their crumbling family homes for care facilities, their lifetimes’ possessions confined to the skip, their homes gone to fire sale to meet nursing home bonds.
The experience taught me, if nothing else, to plan for the eventuality, should it arise.
Twelve years ago when we searched for an aged care facility for my father we saw a range of places, from top to bottom and everything in between. There were places where I would not leave my pets. It was so evident that dignity at the end of life could, in large part, only be guaranteed by money and planning.
It’s a no-brainer, of course, that just as economic and social inequality dictate the providence of life so, too, do they determine in what circumstances we can fade and depart.
If, statistically, my life is now playing out at the more comfortable end of the so-called U-shaped happiness curve, it doesn’t always feel like it.
It’s no easier, no more care-free than it was 20 years ago. And maybe that’s a good thing because at least as far as I’m concerned there’re still mountains to climb and the odd dragon to slay.
• Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia writer and columnist
