Permission May 7, 2009

Hi Jim,

I am honored, feel free to use the essay as an example.

John

Mid Life Crisis

At the young age of 47, strong almost instinctive urges, often made their way to the forefront of my thoughts.  These thoughts had been building for several years, peaking on those warm spring mornings as I was driving to work.  The urges had been building for several years and each year they got stronger.  I often found myself scheming to develop reasons to give in to those urges.  Shortly after my 48^th birthday, I gave into the urges and purchased a small street bike.  I was aware of the term, midlife crisis, but thought it was just myth.  Then, I saw it consume a few of my friends.  I watched it tear a marriage apart.  Was that what this was?  Was this a symptom of my midlife crisis?  My wife said it was my midlife crisis, but I think she was just hoping that this was my mid-life crisis.  I can’t speak with any authority on the causes or effects of “midlife crisis”, but I can talk about what I went through and its effects on me.

For me, riding my motorcycle was a way to ‘let loose’, to recapture some of my youth.  As a teenager, I worked and saved up my money to purchase a motorcycle.  I loved to ride that bike because it gave me a sense of freedom.  As I grew older other things in my life took precedence; college, family, work, kids.  After the kids left home I started to become aware of my age.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but I now believe that I was looking for ways to bring back something from my youth.  I always loved riding my motorcycle and had even kept the motorcycle endorsement on my driver’s license for all those years.  In Wikipedia’s article on midlife crisis, it lists “desire to achieve a feeling of youthfulness” as one of the feelings individuals may have while experiencing a midlife crisis.

As I schemed up reasons to purchase the motorcycle, I tended to let my desires dominate over reason.  These reasons really had no bearing on why I wanted the motorcycle.  Rather, I tried to justify the cost of the motorcycle.  At the time gas was over $2.00 per gallon and it was forecasted to go up over $3.00 per gallon.  I was driving a truck that got around 10 miles per gallon, so I tried to show myself that I could almost make the payment with the savings in fuel costs.  While this is true when I can ride, it does not even come close to making up for the time you can’t ride.  I have kept accurate records on the miles I have put on the motorcycle and actual cost verses how much I would have spent driving the truck.  In the three summers that I have ridden the motorcycle, I have saved just over $700 dollars.  I discounted the amount of time that the bike would be parked in the garage in the off season and when the weather was not contusive to riding a motorcycle.  While I have had similar battles with myself in the past using similar tactics, I believe I ignored logic more than normal. 

Fortunately, I did not experience serious depression as some adults do.  I did experience some disappointment in many of the financial decisions that I had made over the years.  I was always able to make all my payments and maintain a good credit rating, but the problem was the amount of interest that I have paid over the years for various loans.  That money was just thrown away.  I wished I had followed my grandpa’s example.  He never borrowed a dime his whole life; he paid cash for cars, homes, everything.  Sometimes it is better late than never.  Over the last couple of years we have followed Dave Ramsey’s advice and started a ‘debt diet’.  We started the ‘diet’ none too soon, but the only debt we currently have is our home mortgage.  I am proud that we were able to turn that disappointment into a positive.

For me, my midlife crisis was pretty easy and I have been able to learn from it as well.  According to Yale psychologist Daniel Levinson’s theory of adult development, the midlife transition is simply another, normal transition to another stage of life.  Hopefully, I have navigated through this transition to the next stage of my life.  Wikipedia’s article on midlife crisis stated; “Some people have challenged the existence of midlife crises altogether. One study found that 23% of participants had what they called a ‘mid-life crisis,’ but in digging deeper, only one-third of those -- 8% of the total -- said the crisis was associated with realizations about aging.”  Maybe this was a “mid-life crisis”, maybe it wasn’t.  However, I believe that a person should always accept the challenges that come their way and learn from them, I believe.