I think I’ve finally hit my midlife crisis. People always talk about it as something dramatic that you should somehow prepare for, but for me it arrived quietly. And now that it’s finally staring me in the face, it feels like the end of my days.
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I had a career in social care that I eventually abandoned after being completely burnt out by the pandemic. I moved into a different sector hoping I’d feel inspired again, or at least freer, but I don’t. Now I’m burnt out all over again, unemployed, and completely unsure what I’m supposed to do with my life.
How do people know what they’re meant to do? Some people seem to have it all figured out, and I honestly don’t understand why I can’t seem to find that clarity for myself. And I guess the million-dollar question is: how do you figure it out?
Eleanor says: It’s not easy, this business of having finite time. You asked how to find clarity about what you’re meant to do. There are ways to get closer to that, but I think treating that as the solution to the feeling of midlife crisis is a bit like trying to find the raincoat that will keep you dry in the sea. Some feeling of missed opportunity is just part of the mortal condition. We cannot get away from the fact that we will die, we will miss out on important things, we will regret some of our choices. The strategy for dealing with the very real grief this brings about isn’t just to answer “what am I meant to do with my life?”, but also to try to silence the voice in you that keeps insistently pressing the question; the one that treats your life as a puzzle to which enough diligent effort might yet reveal the solution.
Let me start with how to feel more clarity about what you’re meant to do. From your letter, I’m not sure whether you mean that in the same way we ask kids what they want to be, that is, for work. If you’re not someone who had a burning sense of destined career in their youth, I think there’s a decent chance that you won’t become one now. This is completely fine, because the exchange of time for capital is not the only source of value. Think of all the other things you’ve done and can do. What have you learned? Who have you loved? What have you treasured, what have you changed? One way to help answer what you want to do now is to ask how you can be one notch more of the things you’d like to be; a little braver, a little kinder. That way it doesn’t feel like there’s one big reveal you must urgently figure out.
As for that insistent voice – the one that thinks meaning must be found on pain of failure, rather than made – one way to hush it is to give yourself the hug that everybody feels like this sometimes. You said some people seem to have it figured out, but think how little of your own feelings are visible day-to-day – then assume you see that much of other people’s feelings too. Everybody’s got a shot not taken, everybody’s felt like this can’t be it. You’re not alone. We’re all here with you, being carried ceaselessly forward in time. Feeling this way is not a sign of a comparative failure.
Another way to silence that voice is a bit more philosophical. It’s to remember that the same things that put us in the midlife crisis are the things that make life valuable at all. Yes, there are no do-overs. We’re going to miss out on things, and then we’re going to die. This is awful. There is no amount of effort or reasoning or figuring out a career that can protect us completely from it. But it’s also what makes life precious. It’s because we’re only here once that we value things at all, that we want to make things that mean things, find each other, understand and love each other. Infinite creatures might tire of such things. We don’t. Our sense of finitude can make midlife so poignant and it’s also why it’s possible for life to have meaning at all.
