The Man in the Red Convertible
We mock the Midlife Crisis, but you may want to have one.
The “Midlife Crisis” automatically conjures up the picture of a middle-aged man, probably with a gut, wearing a shirt with too many buttons undone at the top, sitting inside a red convertible (leased, not owned), the strands of hair on a balding head flowing in the breeze.
Pathetic, right? Chasing status he’ll never have, youth that won’t return, approval he’ll never receive.
His dreams are dying. But they hang on for dear life in his head, unable to accept that certain roads may be closed for good.
Maybe he buys a leather jacket. Gets some Botox. Looks for a young fling to prove he’s still got it. Books a spiritual retreat to reinvent himself over a long weekend. Or maybe he just needs to start a newsletter. Some symbol to reaffirm that he still matters.1
Because the bills keep coming. The children are relentless. Obligations, endless. His marriage dulled down to the logistics. Hobbies? What are those? Life turned out to be harder, and way more boring, than he thought it would be.
Didn’t he do all the right things? Met life’s demands, strove for what he was supposed to? But the life he’s built, filled with nice things and important-sounding titles, all things he thought he wanted, now feels like a cage. Regretfully, it’s one he made himself. Inconveniently, it’s not one he can easily escape.
He may fantasize about running off to a cabin in the woods. Maybe even an apocalypse… something, please, to help clear a few things off his calendar.
And as if things weren’t bad enough, death is within view. He sees it in his aging parents. But no place more than the mirror: the accumulating midsection, the receding hairline, wrinkles around the eyes, aches all over. He’ll listen to one Huberman podcast, start binging on strange supplements, and sign up for a 10K (his knees, in no way are ready).
His life? Feels like a whole lotta nothing. One step after another, on the way to nowhere profound. His memory? Will be lost in the abyss of history. Forgotten even before he’s gone.
“I think I know him better than anyone here. This is a quiet, frightened, insignificant man who has been nothing all his life, who has never had recognition, his name in the newspapers. Nobody knows him, nobody quotes him, nobody seeks his advice... That’s a very sad thing, to be nothing.” – Juror #9, from 12 Angry Men
But underneath it all, there’s something else: the genuine opportunity for reinvention.
Maybe it’s not too late.
Crashing the Car
A few years ago, I accelerated myself into a midlife crisis by stepping away from a secure identity into the unknown. Crashed the car on purpose, it may seem.