Mid-Life Excuses

As I’m pushing 35 with strands of grey hair mischievously sprouting all over my head (to paraphrase Friends’ Phoebe, “For every one you pull out, three will come to its funeral"), wrinkle lines burrowing their way into my face like deep trenches and my arms losing its gravity-defying power, I would usually engage in a few therapeutic measures by way of an euphoric spell of shopping either to update my wardrobe or my look. When all else fail, a trip to the hair salon for that quick fixer-upper and an ego boost from my indefatigable hairstylist should do the trick. Alas, these measures will remain at best transient and at worst ineffectual in the long run.

With the spectre of my youth slowly and surely fades away, it is very easy to blame it squarely on the overused, mythical creature called ‘mid-life crisis’. Just imagine how simple it would be to just exonerate yourself from any wrongful conduct by pinpointing it to these elusive words: mid-life crisis. Short of getting away with murder, you can use it for everything under the sun ranging from that awful hairdye colour you chose last year, that zig-zagged neon top that was the rage last summer to that shortlived obsession with a boyband called A1 (or was it Plus1 or Hi-5 - the right number combination is lost on me).

However, as this article succinctly pointed out, only a rare percentage of middle-aged people ACTUALLY suffer from it. Others are just a bunch of narcissistic jerks whose disillusionment of the world compel them to make lame excuses for their lapses in good judgment.

As Dr. Richard A. Friedman puts it, a married man's 'search for novelty and thrill' in the arms of another woman should never be the easy cop-out for what we define a mid-life crisis:

...This was a garden-variety case of a middle-aged narcissist grappling with the biggest insult he had ever faced: getting older.

Although the topic centers on men and their so-called mid-life crisis, I believe in this day and age it applies to a sampling of loutish females as well. The ‘quick fixes’ that men indulge themselves in to gratify their surplus of libido and to reaffirm their attractiveness demonstrate ever so loudly the self-centered view of their respective universe.

Another glaring yet interesting example where this selfish attribute rears its ugly head is when a baby - a new addition to the family - comes to the picture. Instead of embracing fatherhood and the joys attached to it, a man sees the responsibility as weighing him down and making him feel redundant. Unlike a mid-life crisis, age doesn't figure largely into this classic 'the other woman' problem. Like in the case of a 49-year-old successful man who, five years into the matrimony, has an affair with a colleague after a baby took centerstage of his married life:

Being middle-aged had nothing to do with his predicament; it was just that it took him 49 years to reach a situation where he had to seriously take account of someone else's needs, namely those of his baby son. In all likelihood, the same thing would have happened if he had become a father at 25.

Obviously, age is not a great indicator of one's maturity in handling new challenges head-on. In a typical Malaysian society, there are many instances when the husband started to look elsewhere when he feels alienated following a newborn's arrival. He couldn't stand it that a baby's needs come first and foremost to his constantly exhausted wife. Rather than helping out with the chores, he prefers to find escapism through the lifestyle of a single man.

Granted, genuine albeit rare cases do exist for a true version of mid-life crisis, which the author states "supposedly strikes when most of us have finally figured ourselves out — only to discover that we have lost our youth and mortality is on the horizon."

In 1999, the MacArthur Foundation study on midlife development surveyed 8,000 Americans ages 25 to 74. While everyone recognized the term "midlife crisis," only 23 percent of subjects reported having one. And only 8 percent viewed their crisis as something tied to the realization that they were aging; the remaining 15 percent felt the crisis resulted from specific life events. Strikingly, most people also reported an increased sense of well-being and contentment in middle age.

If the statistics hold true for the last nine years and apply across cultural boundaries, most middle-aged people are in fact happy and satisfied to be where they are today. And here we are thinking that every Tom, Dick and Harry feel miserable with his lot in life and decide to put on a pair of leatherpants to 'feel' young.

Of course, looking young is de rigueur and much sought after in today's fast-moving society, and vain people like me, is susceptible to its commercial calling. Yet, at the end of the day, these external embellishments do not maketh a person; time-honoured wisdom do.

Time to unclutter the closet!