It’s official: Millennials are entering our midlife crisis era. But in true millennial fashion, we’re doing it our own way. We’re not buying sports cars or cheating; we’re joining car shares and exploring polyamory.
Compared to previous generations, millennials have less time and resources, and more anxiety and malaise. We grew up on and alongside the internet (boy has that guy changed!). We’re a generation shaped by economic uncertainty and environmental catastrophe. We’re eager to redefine work and family. The changes to these defining life elements mean the old midlife crisis model just doesn’t work for us.
As a teen, in the nineties and early aughts, pop culture taught me the well-worn tropes, like Monica as “Richard’s little speedster” in Friends, and Red’s motorcycle in That 70’s Show. The midlife crisis was rendered more nuanced and profound but still sterotypically in films like American Beauty and Lost in Translation, where Lester Burnham and Bob Harris grapple with mundanity and meaning at life’s halfway point.
When I turned 40 this year, I was nothing but excited. I had recently landed a book deal and was nearly recovered from a bout of burnout. I made a birthday bingo card and posted it online so friends could sign up to celebrate by taking me out dancing, or to clean up a beach, or to lose against me in a rigorous game of Scrabble. Perhaps my predicament just had to gestate like a baby, because 40 weeks after my fortieth birthday, my midlife crisis hit me like a tombstone.
It was confounding, because my life is…pretty good. I make decent money and haven’t had any serious illnesses or injuries. I live in a safe area, in a country with a robust social safety net. What more could I want? (I mean, other than an end to extreme wealth and poverty, late-stage capitalism, and the military-industrial complex.)
Yet the urge to blow up my little life persists. I fantasize about quitting my comfortable government job, selling my modest bungalow, and starting over somewhere new. And I’m not the only one.
According to Giuntella et al. (2022) data, suicide, sleeping problems, alcohol dependence, concentration difficulties, memory problems, intense job strain, disabling headaches, suicidal feelings, and extreme depression make quadratic hill-shaped patterns peaking at midlife for citizens of rich nations. Clearly, while the old model of the midlife crisis is outdated, we still need some sort of come-to-Jesus moment.
Carl Jung believed that life truly began at 40. He said we spend the first 40 years of our lives learning and attempting to fulfill societal expectations and seeking external validation. Forty is when we begin to process our unique upbringings and circumstances and come to new understandings about ourselves. It’s our second act, when we’re done trying to please others, and become our full authentic selves—if we’re lucky. We finally try to figure out what will fulfill us—before it’s too late.
Now that I’m in my midlife crisis era, and half my life is over, I wonder what I’ll do with the wild and precious remainder (no pressure!). I’ll be blogging about it here. Feel free to follow along as you navigate your own.