What is Midlife?
What is Midlife?
or, your life is not a statistical average
The writer Matthew Schmitz recently published an excellent, short piece about midlife crises, describing how some millennials—especially those of us around age 35 to 40—never embark upon the “life” that the term “midlife” assumes.
For most millennials, the idea of being a forty-year-old ad executive on a commuter train, oppressed by routine and convention as he returns to his spacious suburban home, wife of eighteen years, and two teenage children, is just a fantasy.
He accurately portrays how few millennials are marrying, having kids, or becoming as rich as our parents.
Before you can tire of life as a housewife, you need a house and a husband whose income can maintain a family. Before you can embark on an affair, you need to get married.
Also: how women and men experience midlife differently.
[Upper-middle class women] confront the fact that the dominant image of success hasn’t delivered everything they want their lives to include. [It] is a husband and children they are now likely to miss, not a career, travel, and nightlife.
Men have much more time on their clocks, a fact that allows millennial males now entering middle age to defer any deliberation about what they want out of life. Instead of a second adolescence, they seem determined to enjoy perpetual adolescence.
(“Perpetual adolescence”—I feel seen!)
Ultimately, Schmidtz is critical of his generation. The baby boomers had their crises, but at least they still had children. We millennials, on the other hand…
Our plan of life has been to put off the old patterns of adulthood. There will be plenty of time for that, we’ve been told. For now there’s a vacation, a concert, a promotion to think about. But something is missing in a life made up of only these things.
Yet I can’t shake the feeling that Schmidtz is not so critical of those pursuing art, adventure, career, travel, or adult friendships over starting a family in one’s mid-twenties. He’s not condemning these paths as much as highlighting their trade-offs—a conversation we’ve been having as a society since the 60s.
I’m happy to accept this critique, since I’m actively considering whether not having children will be something I regret. But I’d like to take the conversation in another direction and ask, what does the word “midlife” mean in the first place?
First, midlife implies that you’re halfway through your lifespan. If you die between age 80-90, then you’re mid in your early 40s. (I’m 42 in September 👋🏼😬⚰️)
Unless some breakthrough technology alters our lifespan, it’s hard to argue with that one.
Second, midlife implies that you’re halfway through the theater production which is your life. The play goes something like this: childhood, adolescence, restless young adulthood, settling, child-rearing, [midlife], child-rearing, peak earning, retirement, death. The midlife crisis is the intermission.
This interpretation relies upon a stage theory of adulthood, of which I’m skeptical. But if we’re speaking in averages, then sure, it’s accurate.
Finally, midlife implies that your fortunes will soon decline. If we imagine life on a bell curve, then the second half brings declining health, mobility, energy, attractiveness, optimism, and open-mindedness. Even if you have more money to spend, the quality of your experiences won’t match those of your first half.
There’s no denying that physical vigor decreases in old age, or wrinkles exist, or that some day, everyone dies. But does this mean that after midlife, it’s just one long waterslide into decrepitude?
“Midlife” is an easy concept to digest because it relies upon an extremely simple vision of life: that of a straight line.
It’s the same straight line that teenagers imagine when stressing about college, or parents worry about when trying to get their kid into the “right” school.
A bell curve is another straightforward concept, and perhaps the one thing most of us remember from statistics. Things go up, then things go down. If there’s a certain amount of “goodness” in life, we assume some kind of logical distribution.
It’s the simplest story imaginable. Our brains love simple stories.
Used this way, straight lines and bell curves are instruments of hubris, assuming knowledge of the future and how it will arrive, relying heavily on the concept of “average.” The average woman in the U.K. will live to 81 years old. The average American man’s earnings will peak around age 50. Another name for the bell curve is literally the “normal distribution.”1
It’s foolish to believe that you’re exempt from statistics, especially those based in biology. Just because some women gave birth in their 50s doesn’t mean you should count on it, too. But putting too much faith in averages is its own disease, one that allows us to hide and remain small, rather than courageously imagining a messier, lumpier, more fulfilling life.
When John Taylor Gatto wrote that mass compulsory schooling “tries to shoehorn every style, culture, and personality into one ugly boot that fits nobody,” he was critiquing a system designed to serve the average student. Yet I have met very few “average” young people. Each is a bit asymmetric, and each changes over time.
Average students are statistical fictions. Perfect school systems do not exist. Perfect life trajectories do not exist. We are not simple stories, nor should we try to be.
Here are some things I’m glad I prioritized in my twenties and thirties:
moving fast in the mountains (hiking, backpacking, trail running)
working for two summer camps that embodied my principles
traveling to, and living in, many parts of the USA and the world
extended periods of exploratory reading and writing
working with other people’s kids in environments where I feel totally empowered
keeping my stress levels low; almost never waking to an alarm clock
building deep friendships everywhere
learning to partner dance; diving into the subcultures of tango and fusion
keeping my costs low and saving much of what I earn
Along the way, I did consider opportunity costs. What’s easier to do as an able-bodied and unencumbered twenty/thirty-something? Travel, wilderness adventure, and spending quality time with friends. What easier later in life? Staying in one place, building a home, focusing on earning.
As Matthew Schmitz noted, I’m one of those millennials who “put off the old patterns of adulthood” in the belief that “there will be plenty of time for that.” Guilty as charged. My biology allows me to defer the question of children. I’ve certainly missed the window for being a young dad. Whether I’m messing around with my own kids or someone else’s, I’ll need to mind my lower back.
My retirement account is undoubtedly smaller than other hardworking 41-year-olds. But I have invested heavily in other accounts, ones that are already paying dividends.
Movement, connection, and curiosity.
Adventure, exploration, and ecstasy.
Friends and footsteps.
Books and bliss.
The magic of compounding interest works in these domains, too.
Is something missing in a life made up of these things? Should I approach midlife with trepidation? Is it time to rush, to catch up, to panic, to leap?
I think you know my answer. ■
A few housekeeping notes:
I lost subscribers after my last post about romance. This also happened when I wrote about my ideal partner. I find this entertaining. I imagine people joining this newsletter after reading something about education, and then I hit them with this firehose of personal life, and they’re like, wow, okay, ciao. “The Adventures of Blake” includes all sorts of adventures, folks.
My next Unschool Adventures teen trip is now live: Greece & Turkey 2025. If you know someone age 14-19 who might enjoy six weeks of spontaneous adventure with me and my friend Dev, encourage them to apply by June 30th.
Too bad you lost subs after your very personal and introspective posts…they are what keeps me reading in addition to hearing about your adventures. Vulnerable, interesting, and revealing. Your life is very different from mine, and I find it fascinating. Keep on keeping on.
Hi Blake!
A few thoughts:
1) "My biology allows me to defer the question of children." Be careful about your assumptions around this. I don't want to dump a pile of depressing links onto you, but just google "male fertility". In a nutshell, it's dropped drastically globally (something like 50% over the last 50 years), and it's compounded by age. There's no clear consensus on the causes, but there are probably many: industrialization, unavoidable hormone-disrupting chemicals in the environment, microplastics, other pollutants, mass-produced foods, etc. I spent a lot of my own prolonged adolescence trying to avoid making children, and then a difficult decade in my forties trying to have them. Lower quality of fertility doesn't just mean it's harder to have children, it can mean more chance of complications (miscarriage, stillbirths, genetic anomalies). In short, it might not be as much of a choice as you think it is, and more of a gift from the universe, one way or the other.
2) About the stages of life: how about an alternative progression: learning, exploring, building, sharing, nurturing, supporting, transcending (that last one is sort of like a version of the Hindu sannyasa adapted to Western life, where you focus on inner development/peace). Interpreting later stages as decline due to physical condition/energy is a choice of perspective. I'm on the cusp of 50, in the nurturing phase, and I wouldn't trade it for my 20s for anything in the world, even though I'm much less physically active and capable.
3) My experience of "midlife crisis", if it can be called that, was more about going through a transition where I had to reevaluate my priorities, my assumptions, the expectations I had placed upon myself, and accept a shift into another mode of life. Maybe call it a redefinition phase, with a dark night of the soul thrown in for good measure. For some of us, it's not until we're in our forties or fifties that that we can face some of the things that have been embedded in us since early childhood. It's terrifying to be so far along in life and to feel the vulnerability of having to tear everything down, face demons you didn't know you had, without knowing or having any guarantee about how you'll come out the other end. Sometimes the external stability of a home, roots, a family, etc. can provide a more secure environment to go through that process.