Day 120: If We're All Having Mid-life Crises in Our 30's Does That Mean We'll Die Young?

Either my generation is going to die sooner than those previous, or we’re now having third–year crises as opposed to the traditional mid-life variety. Lately, it seems I am not the only one of my age group who is rethinking her life and the choices made. We are examining who we’ve become, how we got here and why we made the choices that brought us here.

So why this sudden stumbling block in our paths to our real mid-life meltdown? At 36 or 37 years old it seems untimely to be second guessing all of our choices. Your children are still in grade school can you actually be wondering what your life would be like without them? Similarly, can same age childless couples really fret over a life without children when they are still able to conceive? Aren’t we just a little young to be racing down this path of regret?

I am the last person to lecture on not having self-doubt. The argument could be made that I am, in fact, the poster child for self-examination and narcissistic obsession with my own life and circumstances. The reason for my blog is this very pursuit. Who am I? How did I get to be this person and should I be someone else? These might be the most ironic discussion I’ve had with my laptop. I am mired in self-reflection and questions of “what if” and yet here I am asking about the validity of that very pursuit.

Maybe we are just a generation of over analyzers. We’re not the boomers, we’re not the clueless and over-entitled Gen Y, we’re the aging Gen Xers and it’s become practically our job to think about every nuance of our lives. Why do we succeed, why do we fail, why do we ask why? We’re not going through a premature mid-life crisis, we’re just fulfilling our own need to focus on us. Our parents got married young, had kids young, had a mortgage, jobs and focused all their energy on making the lives of their children better than theirs was. Success. Our lives are so comfy that our biggest worries are those we create for ourselves. You have kids, enjoy them and move it along. You don’t have kids, enjoy the silence and extra cash in your wallet and get over it. One day we will be mid-life and we’re going to need to leave some stones unturned so we have something real to rebel against when that day comes.