Are You Happy?

The answer might depend on your age.  I spent about 20 minutes earlier this morning learning about the U-curve, which attempts to explain why some... most, even... people go through what's known as a midlife crisis.  The opening grafs from "The Real Roots of Midlife Crisis:"

This summer, a friend called in a state of unhappy perplexity. At age 47, after years of struggling to find security in academia, he had received tenure. Instead of feeling satisfied, however, he felt trapped. He fantasized about escape. His reaction had taken him by surprise. It made no sense. Was there something wrong with him? I gave him the best answer I know. I told him about the U-curve.

Not everyone goes through the U-curve. But many people do, and I did. In my 40s, I experienced a lot of success, objectively speaking. I was in a stable and happy relationship; I was healthy; I was financially secure, with a good career and marvelous colleagues; I published a book, wrote for top outlets, won a big journalism prize. If you had described my own career to me as someone else’s, or for that matter if you had offered it to me when I was just out of college, I would have said, “Wow, I want that!” Yet morning after morning (mornings were the worst), I would wake up feeling disappointed, my head buzzing with obsessive thoughts about my failures. I had accomplished too little professionally, had let life pass me by, needed some nameless kind of change or escape.

My dissatisfaction was whiny and irrational, as I well knew, so I kept it to myself. When I thought about it—which I did, a lot—I rejected the term midlife crisis, because I was holding a steady course and never in fact experienced a crisis: more like a constant drizzle of disappointment. What annoyed me most of all, much more than the disappointment itself, was that I felt ungrateful, the last thing in the world I was entitled to be.

Illustration from the article.

The article is relatively long but seriously interesting, none the less.  After I finished the article I sat and reflected for a while, asking myself if I went through a midlife crisis and were things better today than they were, say, ten or 20 years ago?  It's a mixed bag.  I definitely went through some difficult times following my divorce (some people would say I'm not out of those woods yet) and I experienced what author Jonathon Rauch calls a "constant drizzle of disappointment" about life in general during that time.  Yet I think I remained happy in an overall sense and went on to achieve the pinnacle of my professional career after running away from home and gallivanting all over the country for a year.  

These days, when that U-curve should be on the upswing as I approach age 70 (this coming March, if you must know), I range from ambivalent to reasonably satisfied with most things in life.  There's at least one caveat, however: I'm not a terribly introspective person.

So... midlife crisis?  Here's one answer:

Heh.  From The Shoebox blog, obviously.