Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Midlife crises
celebrating midlife crisis, originally uploaded by Orrin.
Orrin writes,
This got a little out of hand. I had no idea that birthday candles could “go inferno” so easily. The look of horror on my face is nearly spontaneous. It turned out okay. Eyelashes are overrated.
My midlife crisis isn’t about the loss of youth. Like Orrin’s eyelashes, my youth was highly overrated, and I’m well quit of it. I’m in better shape now than I’ve ever been, I’m in control of my destiny, and, for the most part, life is good.
My midlife crisis isn’t about some newly detected awareness of mortality, either. I’ve been death-obsessed since my early twenties — thanks in equal parts to med school and my wife’s way-too-young baptism by serious illness.
I’m thinking that my midlife crisis, if I have one, will be about the choices I’ve made, could have made, could still make. Because I keep thinking that I should have done more than this.
Maybe it’s science fiction that left me with impossible expectations. Not only have I not saved the universe from transdimensional collapse, I haven’t even saved the planet. I haven’t walked on Mars, haven’t contacted extraterrestrials, haven’t traveled through time. And, sure, as I got older I understood that some things simply didn’t happen (no one gets their own personal starship, not even Bill Gates’s kid), yet I kept thinking I’d make more of a difference.
I know I should be content with what I have. I make a difference to my family and to my patients. Isn’t that enough? But the world is so fucked up and I don’t feel like I’m doing anything about it! After all, there are plenty of things a doctor can do to act on the global stage — take a job with WHO or Doctors Without Borders, to name a couple.
But I couldn’t do that without putting my family through some serious grief.
Well, anyway, sorry to whine. It’s Jewish guilt, that’s what it is. It’s a consequence of God not telling you what He wants from you, not when you’re a teenage believer and certainly not when you’re a middle-aged agnostic. So you’re always wondering if you chose wrong.
When I searched Flickr for “midlife crisis,” I found lots of car pictures, a few motorcycle pictures, and only one cute young woman.
Heidi’s Midlife Crisis: Braids!
Yeah. That’s what I need — braids.
D.
Don’t you just love it when Doug talks dirty?
You are waaaay to quick on the draw, mister.
Ah, but you have traveled through time, just in one direction and without the advantage of skipping ahead, but still, it’s time travel!
Hmph. I had something quicker and more reversible in mind.
Okay, you need a Tesla coil, but it needs to be wrapped with silver wire instead of copper. You’re also going to need a couple strong silver (not nickel!) plated NdFeB magnets (the spherical variety), a pure quartz crystal (for timing–nothing metaphysical), some vacuum tubes (modern electronics don’t well tolerate temporal distortion) and a piece of chalk. Also, wait… There’s some guy in a black suit knocking on my door… Later…
Just make sure you do the candle-inferno before you do the braids.
And I say, if God won’t tell you want he wants from you, it’s his problem if he doesn’t like the way you turn out.
Um, forget everything I just wrote. Nothing to it. Nothing at all.
Dan: yeah, Tesla had it all figured out.
SxK: Good point. Now if only I could figure out what I want from me 😉
Yeah, and now that you’ve fixed it, I look like a right Charlie.
I don’t think you have enough hair for braids…
microsoar: hey wait a sec, Southern Hemisphere and all, wouldn’t that make you a left Charlie?
ps: yeah, thanks for pointing that out. MUST I use /snark tags for all my jokes?
What can I say? I’m feeling very concrete today.
Whenever I feel disappointed that I’ve never built a pyramid of 70,000 skulls or invented a cure for cancer it helps to remember that the best times in my life have been connected to some small, private thing. It’s always when some character with a hard-on for glory and achievement turns up that everything goes to hell.
Besides, I always thought that MLC was supposed to include a red sports car.
Yeah, look on the bright side, I could have become President. Now that would have sucked.
I know what you mean, I had that midlife crisis thing when I turned 40 because it occurred to me it was “now or never” in regard to having a kid. I chose “never” and have gotten over the trauma of the “road not taken” thing. I guess everyone has these moments and you just have to do what you want to do. And I didn’t want to spend Saturday mornings watching kids play soccer. But that was just me. People who do that are great, and more power to them!
I am so past my midlife crisis – I love being 54. No one asks me anymore if I am going to have kids!