Revisiting the definition of midlife crisis
How Taylor Swift and these 5 Substack authors rewrote a tale as old as time
I first wrote about the song “Anti-Hero” as my midlife anthem when the album Midnights was released in 2022. This is an updated version of that piece with new wisdom from five on the topic of midlife crisis.
It’s me, hi.
Like many midlife reinvention travelers I meet who think they’re the problem,
writes, “I’m having a midlife crisis.” I found a lot to relate to her in her piece and I also recognized the familiar voice of a self-saboteur:Now what? Who knew these two words could be so scary. After five years of fighting fires both literally and figuratively in my business and personal life I had unintentionally made the horrible mistake of allowing enough stability into my life to allow that question to take root in my consciousness.
I have no idea at 53 years old how to even consider what I might want for myself outside of the needs, wants and considerations of someone else… —Notes from a Midlife Crisis
Same, Maureen. Same.
Cue the music whenever my saboteur enters the conversation to tell me I’m the problem—which is to say, I was singing a similar tune since long before Taylor had her first hit.1
When I first heard “Anti-Hero” from Taylor Swift’s 2022 album Midnights, I wondered if the then 32-year-old pop star could see inside my newly-turned 60-year-old head.
The “Anti-Hero” video vibes with 1970s avocado-green and harvest-gold, triggering my childhood anxieties. Taylor describes it as a “guided tour” through her insecurities, and I get it. Even now—post-career, post-menopausal, so full of reinspired potential—my self-doubt still hangs around the room like so many macrame plant holders.
Tay Tay is at least a few years from perimenopause. She’s thirty-four now—in love at last, and this time it’s real, so sayeth the video clips that flood my socials.2 And yet, she wrote these lyrics that make me feel seen in a way I wouldn’t dare to look at myself.
I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror.
The video plays out like an insomniac’s nightmare of anxiety and self-sabotage. I took these same nocturnal trips over ten years of not sleeping. At first, it was the hourly blankets-on-blankets-off gyrations, then the sound of passing time—tick-tick-tick—turned up to eleven.
I have this thing where I get older, but just never wiser
Midnights become my afternoons
Maybe you’ve sung this tune too—lurching about town and imagining the worst of what everyone thinks of you—and the very, very worst things you make up about yourself. If so, cheers!
No? Just me?
Anyway, my point is if a beautiful superstar billionaire can feel like a “monster on the hill” and perennially under a hate-filled microscope, these emotional (and real-life) reckonings are not specific to midlife. And, except for stalkers and deep-fakes, they don’t necessarily constitute a crisis.
It’s just life. And life is “mid.”
reckons that the meh feeling applies to all ages, especially the young who use “mid” “humorously or sarcastically to express disappointment or underwhelm.”If the zeitgeist of our time is such that the average day is treated with disdain, that decent art is disposable, that a life which under all other circumstances would be classified as “good” is instead mocked with this pejorative, there is both a problem with our world itself and with how many choose to experience it. — The Friscalating Dusklight
Now, that’s a crisis.
Midlife wasn’t considered a crisis until 1965 when Canadian psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques, then 48, coined the term and defined “midlife crisis” as a period of emotional turmoil between the ages of 40 and 60 when we confront our limitations and our mortality.
Since then, we’ve seen both tragic and comedic portrayals of midlife crises in movies and memes—he’s driving a new Maserati, and she’s adopting cats, quitting her job, and moving to Vermont. HA, Ha, ha…
No. Seriously.
I think it’s easier to stereotype life’s universal twists and turns than to admit how hard it can be to keep our hands on the wheel.
Crisis or not?
writes the newsletter I wish I’d had when I was raising children and trying to be a person in a world rife with opportunity. She reminds me that life is making decisions and trade-offs, depending on where we are and what we can afford in time, money, and emotional bandwidth, and more than that — forgiving ourselves for not doing it all right this goddammed minute.I don’t have to like this but maybe also I’ll stop beating myself up for not having the same levels of creativity and ideas and energy spewing out of my head as I did 20 years ago.
They say there are seasons in life. I am in my driving season right now.
Right on! There is nothing “mid” about self-acceptance, Claire
When Forbes ran a piece last summer titled “Midlife Crisis: Signs and Symptoms,” it listed “unhealthy behaviors” and “drastic changes” to look out for as though merely reaching age 50 or so warranted a special crisis hotline.
Sure, it can feel like a crisis—but is it?
asks, in a piece titled Midlife Crisis or Midlife Opportunity?We exquisitely sense life’s potential and our own mortality simultaneously. And it leaves us anxious.
How shall I spend the good years I have left? How do I live a meaningful life? What was the purpose of all I’ve done until now? What can I do with my future to make it meaningful? These questions make us uncomfortable, but discomfort is not the same as a crisis. ….
Crises are bad things that happen to us, and the transition to midlife is a natural life stage that is neither inherently good nor bad.
It’s decision time.
I always thought crisis meant a situation dire enough to warrant freaking out, but this etymological discovery blew my mind:
The word crisis comes from the Greek KRISIS, which means to DECIDE.
Then there’s this quote attributed to Albert Einstein:
In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity.”
And my favorite from Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s classic book, Gift from the Sea
Perhaps middle age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells: the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego.
Even if those shells are as comfortable as an old cardigan, midlife is an opportunity to shake them off to make room for new growth and decide what’s right for me.
I also really like how
sums it up in The Midst:Now that women are living longer than ever (the average American woman will live to 81 and many people now strive for 100+) — middle age is loaded with potential and possibilities.
Move over, midlife crisis. Think midlife reawakening or recovery.
At the end of the Anti-Hero video, we see Taylor and her midnight saboteur sharing a bottle of wine on a suburban rooftop. Giant Taylor lurches down the street alone and stops to meet her alter-egos. I imagine the clock strikes midnight as they all laugh together and share a bottle of wine.
Like this moment in the video, my midlife reinvention road trip has seen the merging and acceptance of the different parts of myself. As my midlife quest (not crisis) for self-acceptance continues, every midnight marks a new day where I decide to keep going or begin again.
Work hard. Be brave. Believe.
Catherine
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The song was “Tim McGraw.” The year was 2006. She was sixteen.
Yes, I know the algorithm feeds me this stuff because I actively seek it out. I think Taylor Swift is a marvel. Sue me.
I love your reframe “As my midlife quest (not crisis) for self-acceptance” - funny that one can hit this age of life and struggle with this 🫶🏻
So good. Opportunities abound I’m gonna come back to this one. Thank you. Well done.