How To Avoid A Midlife Crisis (an open letter to twenty-somethings)

Dear young adult,

I know you’re not thinking about having a midlife crisis right now. I know the concept feels far away and foreign, the domain of grumpy gen-Xers and geriatric millennials who drink too much coffee and still complain about being tired all the time. I know you’re probably tired of people telling you to enjoy your stage of life because it all goes so fast. You might not believe me, but the reason almost everyone says this when they reach a certain age is because stages of life actually do go quickly. In fact I can prophecy with confidence that you’ll be saying the something similar in about twenty years time, to the tolerant nods of your juniors. Twenty years probably feels like an eternity to you right now. I get it. But eventually the speed of life catches up with you like a marathon runner who loses sight of the starting line and suddenly realises that the impossibly-distant finish line is actually real and not so distant after all. The difference is that a marathon runner wants to reach the finish line, whereas in life most people don’t. Thus, the midlife crisis. And apparently, I’m due for one. I’ve slept through enough nights and celebrated enough birthdays to qualify for such things, even though no one can tell me what the true mid-point of my life is with any degree of certainty. The specifics don’t matter. My life is clearly passing by, and I’ve reached the stage where this fact can no longer be hidden or ignored. This is the driving force of the midlife crisis—the sudden intrusion of truths we like to push away for as long as possible. At some point they come in anyway, and make themselves at home.

I’m writing to you, dear young adult, because you have not reached that stage yet. If you want to, you can keep the truth locked out of your mind for a little longer. You might know, technically, that life is limited and that you are mortal, but you might not feel it yet. That’s ok. You don’t have to feel the truth to recognise it and start living in the light of it. Here’s a secret that is more valuable than you probably realise right now: having a midlife crisis is not mandatory. It can be avoided.

I’m not saying you can skip midlife. You can’t. If you are fortunate enough to live then you must live through every stage, including the middle. What I’m saying is that the middle of life does not have to be a crisis for you. And I’m telling you now because if you wait to start thinking about avoiding a midlife crisis until you reach midlife, it will be too late. You can learn lessons from the crisis, of course, and it can make you better—but wouldn’t you rather learn the lessons in advance, and skip the crisis? Here’s my advice on how to do that:

Live in the truth of your humanity. Whether you feel it or not, recognise the fact that your life is limited, your time is limited, your strength is limited, and your health is limited. I’m not saying you should be morbid and sour about this—on the contrary—you should enjoy and leverage the gifts of youth while you have them. I’m starting to play trombone with the things I read, just to see the letters. Your eyes probably adjust properly, instantly, and you might be able to run fast without constant training and stay up late without crashing your system hardware. Enjoy that! Recognise where you are in the timeline of your entire life—you have strength and vitality right now, and you can leverage it to grow in the areas where you have gaps: like gaining knowledge and getting experience and the wisdom that comes with it. Learn from those who have gone before you what really lasts, what is really good, and train your heart to love those things more than the constant shouting immediate pleasures that suck away your time, your focus, and your energy and give you almost nothing in return. Don’t try to drown the truth out with distractions for as long as you can. Let it in now, and live in it.Discover God’s purpose for your life. Living in the truth that your life is passing quickly can make some folks terribly depressed, but it doesn’t have to. The key question here is: what are you living for? If you’re only living for your own pleasure, then yes, it will always be depressing to think that your strength is going to fade, and fast. If, however, you are secure in Christ’s promises of forgiveness and love and hope that outlasts death itself, then your happiness is already safe in God’s hands and you can start focusing your life on generously sharing all that He has given you with the people around you. This is the purpose you were made for: to be close to God and reflect his goodness and truth to everyone and everything around you. If you start living for this now with all your heart and soul and strength, then you won’t need to re-think the purpose and meaning and direction of your life in your middle years. You can just carry on.Start planting what you want to reap. In Galatians 6:7, the Apostle Paul warns us: “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” It’s possible for us to be deceived because, as in farming, there is often a delay in life between our actions and their natural outcomes. This can be bad—some destructive choices might take years to catch up to you fully, but when they do, they bite with a vengeance. The opposite is also true: some of the richest blessings in life can only come after years of slow growth. Take friendship, for example: you can make a new friend quickly, but to experience the comfortable freedom, stable refuge, and undercurrent of joy found in old friendships, you’ll need to invest time and effort. Lots of it. There are no short cuts. The same is true in developing community, or growing a family. It’s true in careers, and any skill you want to develop. Anything you commit to, and invest yourself in, will grow with time. And the longer it grows, the greater the harvest will be. Just think of what your abilities could become, what your community could become, what your relationships could become if you didn’t hold back from them to preserve your freedom. Listen: all the freedom in the world is useless if you don’t use it for something. So think carefully, choose wisely, and commit yourself early in life—especially in building strong relationships, which are far more important than our noisy, busy, stressed-out world will ever tell you. The earlier you commit to friends, church, community, marriage, and family, the longer you’ll have to reap the blessings that can only grow with time. 

Dear young adult, you don’t have to have a midlife crisis. If you start living in the truth, in the purpose God made you for, and if you begin planting what is good, right now—then in the place of a crisis, you can reap a midlife harvest.