Above are pictures of charts that I took from an interesting book that I read over the weekend. The book is called The Happiness Curve Why Life Gets Better After 50 by Jonathan Rauch. The author is an award winning journalist, who set out to do some research as to explain what used to be known as the “midlife crisis”, which the author himself prefers to call a “slump.” The book sets out to show the interesting fact that in a time period in life where people have achieved a fair level of success in everything that they had set out to do: their careers, their families and relationships, hobbies, etc., many of us midlifers seem to feel a confusing, unexplained level of dissatisfaction. As shown in the above charts, our life satisfaction ratings are at the lowest that they will ever be, and yet there doesn’t seem to be a real reason for it. As the author writes “I’m dissatisfied with my life right now because. . . .(yet) there is nothing after the because.” The author starts the book offering these heartening statements:
“First, midlife slump (not “crisis”!) is completely normal and natural. Like . . . adolescence, it is a healthy if sometimes painful transition, and it serves a purpose by equipping you for a new stage of life. You may feel dissatisfied, but you don’t need to feel too worried about feeling dissatisfied.
Second, the post-midlife upturn is no mere transient change in mood: it is a change in our values and sources of satisfaction, a change in who we are. It often brings unexpected contentment that extends into old age and, yes, even into frailty and illness.
Third, by extending our life spans, modern medicine and public health have already added more than a decade to the upturn. . . . . Some sociologists call this new stage of life encore adulthood. Whatever you call it, it is a gift the likes of which mankind has never known before.”
What I liked best about the book was the positive reassurance. The book reassures us that it is normal and natural to feel that way that we do (science shows that even primates go through a midlife slump), during such a huge transitional time period in our lives. Just like we give a little more understanding to our teenagers, knowing they are going through a lot of big changes all at once, we have to offer that same kind of leeway and comfort to ourselves. While the book showed all of the research proving that this time period is an emotionally fraught period, it also showed the research that proves that this tough phase passes into something that is reportedly to be, many people’s most satisfying life periods ever. While we are in the trough, the author recommends that we normalize our feelings by opening up to spouses and partners and friends, who are likely feeling the same malaise, to interrupt our internal critics and stop with comparisons, to take care of our physical bodies with good nutrition, exercise and rest, to practice staying in the present moment, and to step (do NOT emotionally leap) into changes that you are wanting to make. He says in order to avoid impulsive moves that you might regret, you should make lateral moves in an incremental, constructive and logical manner. However, the author says that “the most important wisdom of all” is to wait and to sit in the knowing that it gets better. He says this:
“In the Voyage of Life, you are a plaything of forces larger than yourself, borne upon a stream you cannot control. So relinquish control. Trust the river. Trust time.”
The author speaks of walking with a fellow writer, a man whose life and work he had always admired. He was shocked when his friend admitted that he, himself, had experienced a midlife crisis/slump. His friend had this to say:
“Midlife crisis begins sometime in your forties, when you look at your life and think, Is this all? And it ends about ten years later, when you look at your life again and think, Actually this is pretty good.”
The author ends the book on this hopeful note:
“If I had to explain the upside of the U in just three words, the words I would use are these: Gratitude comes easier. That is the hidden gift of the happiness curve.
It is worth the wait.”