Every Age Has a Crisis

In 1965, Canadian psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques coined the term "midlife crisis" — a period where people in their 30s and 40s underwent depression and disorientation. In simple terms, you wake up one day and realise that while everything in your life is real, you don't recall any of it being part of the life plan you hatched when you were a kid. Now you're wondering how you got there.

Not sure if Elliott remembers his life before that stage but from my memory there's been a crisis at every stage of my life. Each stage had a different root but the same weight.

In my late teens and early 20s, the crisis was FOMO. Social status and fitting in. The priority was my social calendar because adulthood was still a lifetime away. My version of bills were clothing, snacks and enough fuel in my car for the weekend. This was the age of potential — running on the fumes of a childhood belief that endless opportunities will fall into your lap because you're special. Hard work was for people who took life too seriously.

In my late 20s to early 30s the crisis shifted register. Now it was relationships, money, social standing and looking successful. Career progress, home ownership and just "things". This is where the gap becomes noticeable between those who spent their youth collecting memories and those who spent it collecting skills. If you were like me, you left your youth with cool stories and life experience but nothing that could be marketed easily. So now the crisis is how do I narrow the gap as quick as I can?

The late 30s sharpen everything. The gap either closes or it doesn't. Either outcome produces its own version of fear. The crisis now is convincing yourself that everything is going the way it should. That everything up to that point has been setting you up for the greatest chapter of your life. You're stuck between "Time to take that big risk" and "I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing." This is the stage where you probably first entertain the idea that maybe — just maybe — you won't live forever.

And so here I am in my 40s. This is why I don't believe in midlife crises. I didn't wake up one day and wonder how I got here. I know exactly how and why. I woke up and accepted that I'd chosen to follow a script I didn't write. The key word is "chosen." Many others read the same script and chose to forge their own path. I took the easy way out and opted for default mode. Now I'm here and it's the same crisis I faced at every other stage of my life — only this time with a clearer lens. There is no excuse either. I was given every opportunity to build something. I squandered it all. This is not a sad song. This is the reality and I'm not going to cry over shouldas, wouldas, couldas.

And that clarity is exactly what the midlife crisis framing gets wrong. It pathologises the moment of honest self-assessment rather than recognising it for what it is — the most accurate reading you'll be fortunate enough to have. By forty, most people have enough data to see the pattern they've been inside. The fear isn't a malfunction or a knee-jerk reaction. Old enough to stop being silly but young enough to self-correct before you're too far off course to care. They say it's never too late. That's a lie. Time may not run out the way we see it on a game clock, but it certainly slips away. My biggest fear isn't financial stability and asset accumulation for retirement. My biggest fear is that I'll spend the last half of my life the same way I’ve spent the first half. Living a life I don't want instead of building one that I do.

The 50s and beyond will carry a different fear. Different root. Same weight. I'm not there yet so I won't pretend to own it. But I've watched enough people move through it to recognise the shape. By the time you reach that stage the clarity is almost complete. You know exactly who you are, what you want, what you'd do differently. The cruel part is that the clarity arrives at the same time as the countdown. A quiet awareness that the back half of the game plays faster than the front. The fear isn't death. The fear is running out of runway before the thing you finally know you want gets off the ground. I'd rather hit that stage in delusion. Waking up with a mission that has no end date than in comfort with nothing left to build toward.

Every age has a crisis. Their own challenge. It's not something that belongs only to the midlife stage. What makes this age distinctive is that it's probably where the majority finally wake up and pull their heads out of the sand. Some will arrive at this realisation before others. Some later. Some never will.

There is no blueprint. No rule that says the thing you build has to stand the test of time or impress anyone who wasn't there when you built it. Dream as big or as small as you want. Scale it to your life, not someone else's highlight reel. The only thing that matters is that it's yours. Not inherited, not defaulted into, not chosen because it was the next logical step on a script you never auditioned for.

Each stage hands you a clearer picture than the one before. Because each stage has more data to work with.

The fear doesn't sharpen. The picture does.

It's not a warning of something going wrong.

It's a receipt for everything that's already happened.