Mid Life Crisis

Most people have to go through this upsetting stage in life although it can be extremely hard to predict when it will occur. The average man or lady off the street has no idea when exactly the middle of their life will be, one can only assume that 40yrs old would be a suitable half way point in time, have a crisis only to get through it and then be made into mincemeat by a number 42 bus speeding in a built up area!

Thankfully a mid-life-crisis is not really about being half way to the grave or anything so mundane, it is really linked to a complete realisation that the dreams are over, that what you have is about all you'll have and that your three kids, the two up, two down brick house and the half-mad dog are all that you have achieved in the past twenty years or so of working life.

At about twenty most youngsters are embarking on a new stage in their lives, the childhood years a mere memory of nagging teachers and parents interspaced with a few cartoons and computer games! Some are now at university trying to relive their youth whilst ostensibly studying some such subject that they will never refer to again in their whole lives, or are already sitting behind a desk with a computer screen glued to their nose! Others may have opted for a more participative career like joining the dole queue or breaking water pipes for free so that they may fix them at a highly exaggerated price! Even the rich and snobby have moved on, no longer content to pretend to be the Lord of the Manor by marching behind daddy in a pair of Wellington boots, they are now the Lord of the Manor or spending lots of daddy's money and smoking dope in a darkened corner of Soho!

In all cases the age of twenty (whether rich or poor, clerk or layabout) is the start to the dreaming and planning stage for most, the era in which life stretches ahead and way over the horizon without falter. Some may see the future as a windy tree enriched avenue with a multitude of crossroads every ten metres or they maybe on a mass freeway and in the fast lane in their souped up mini! Others may not see a road just a stretch of parched desert and an oasis or an ocean with a palm encrusted island at the other end!

Then the age of thirty comes along reducing oceans to mere lakes, freeways to lanes and islands to dunes on the Welsh coast.

Another few years more and it comes with a bang, whilst still behind that desk listening to the nagging voice of the boss or still at the end of the long line at the dole office, it suddenly becomes blatantly clear that there never was a freeway, that minis never actually manage to get onto the fast lane and that the lake was after all just a mirage!

The mid life crisis has come 'a-nockin' at your door!

In other words a mid life crisis is a sudden realisation that past dreams will never be reached. It is at this point in life that those suffering from this rude awakening suddenly approach lawyers in quest of immediate divorce on grounds of cruelty or go out for a packet of fags and appear in next weeks newspaper with the headlines of "trepid explorer eaten alive by giant spiders in the Amazon Jungle". Others commit suicide or attempt to and more still become serious hypochondriacs or muscle toning fanatics. But by and large most of those awakened just become boring old farts who nobody wants to talk to anymore as they are always complaining and moaning about mundane things.

There is a way past all of this! A light at the end of the tunnel for anybody worrying about the advent of this infliction or who don't want to see there dreams washed down the plug hole. A simple way to getting through this and to live a fulfilling and rewarding post mid-life-crisis is to have it early on in life! Naturally the many sceptics out there will jump on the bandwagon of this statement and say that this is tantamount to cutting ones life short or to cheating life as it is dealt. But quite simply by having an early upset and a planned one to boot it is far easier to cope with. It is also more realistic in the sense that it does not spring out of the closet at the most importune times nor does it drag on indefinitely.

Have a mid-life-crisis in the morning, shake and moan about lost dreams and prattle on boringly about what a waste it has all been and then just get on with life. And the good thing is that just maybe there is well over three quarters of it left to enjoy.

Unless of course that goddarn number 42 bus driver who is having his very own mid-life-crisis just happens to be speeding along the very road that you are currently having the pleasure of walking along - having just got over your midlife crisis in a day and at the age of twenty nine.