What Is Midlife, After All?
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The preliminary results are in from my (very) unscientific survey of 175 men of random ages. It was particularly unscientific because I had only a 16% response rate from my population sample. As I suspected, guys don't seem very anxious to talk about themselves. However, of those who returned the survey, I got quite a lot of very good information . . . although little of it was really surprising. One issue came through clearly: nobody can precisely define midlife.
The one respondent who was less than forty identified himself as not yet in midlife. Two others who were between 40 and 55 (probably at the lower end of the scale) said they were not yet in midlife. Almost 2/3 (61%) of the respondents identified themselves as currently in midlife, Almost all the remaining 1/3 (29%) of the respondents saw midlife as behind them. The data suggest that, rather than being a specific age, or age range, midlife is a state of mind.
As psychiatrist James Hollis comments in his Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, "Thus, no matter their age, I saw that client after client was undergoing some sort of passage for which their conscious life was unprepared, leaving them confused, frustrated, disoriented." Does that create a familiar resonance? An additional piece of data suggests that, of the sample, an awesome 90% of the participants considered that they were in or had gone through midlife. That implies to me (again, only somewhat scientifically) that the onset of 'middle age' (however you choose to define it) happens once you've become ensconced in your career. This may be something to investigate further later on.
What about the other end of this experience? Of those under 55 years old, only 7-1/2% think that they've passed through middle age. By age 60, that figure more than doubles to 19%. Yet, even above age 60, 57% of the respondents in that age group felt like they were still going through midlife. In a future article, we'll explore a little more deeply into what these people think midlife entails. For now, I'll be satisfied to know that my experience and predictions (in perfect agreement with Dr. Hollis) were essentially correct: midlife makes up the period of actual transition from childhood (even masquerading in an adult body and hiding behind an apparently adult life) to genuine maturity. It also backs up my assertion that some people transition through midlife easily, while some may never complete the transition at all.
What contribution can we make to this phenomenon? In a future version of this survey, I want to seek a correlation between successful transition through midlife and the level of personal life satisfaction. Everything I know thus far indicates that levels life satisfaction should rise dramatically once the midlife transition has been accomplished. Making this reasonable assumption tells me that my contribution needs to be to support and encourage (and, if necessary, guide) men through this transitional period, which may last many years — even decades. By supporting them in making this transition, and assisting them in shortening the length of the process, they could raise their level of life satisfaction earlier and, therefore, higher. How significant is that?
Even with our relatively tiny sample size, there's still a lot of analysis that can be done to focus our efforts better along these lines. In the meantime, together we'll be building our support program. If you would be interested in making a contribution of your knowledge, experience, and/or energy to creating and delivering this program, you could subscribe to my weekly e-Zine, The Balance Sheet, to follow along with our progress, or just e-mail me directly with your comments or suggestions. After all, according to our data, you're probably going through midlife right now!
What Is Midlife After All - To learn more about this author, visit Les Brown's Website.
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