Sushmita Bose :
Too old to rock, too young to roll: At what point in life does your midlife crisis actually begin?
At times, it amazes me how badly the ‘middle aged’ segment is treated by marketplace economics. Consequently, you have middle-agers dealing with midlife crisis (like blowing up retirement funds on a new-age Italian sports car) and being subjected to tremendous sociological trampling.
If you are young and restless, the world looks at you adoringly: you are special, you are most likely to be tossing your three-month-old gadget in favour of a one-week-old one, you count, you are spoken of highly in focus group gatherings, you are the bringer of change, you are always the target group (TG) being pandered to.
If you are old, well then, salutations: you’ve just hung in there for so long, you are the harbinger of values of the days of yore (when the world was definitely better, so what if it was gadgets-free?), you can definitely spin a yarn, serve up nostalgia… and you probably own property.
But if you are middle-aged, it’s like being in that ‘too old to rock, too young to roll’ underpass. Nobody takes you seriously. You’re in that bleak no man’s land where your wearing a mini-skirt is not you being sartorially adventurous – but a clear indication of your insecurity of some sort of approaching doom (could it be old age? If it is, cheer up, it’s a darn sight better than middle age in terms of acceptability).
Recently, when there was talk of presenting someone with a dress this Diwali, a 24-year-old was like, “Duh, she’s 40+ dude, middle-aged, what are you thinking of? She’s an aunty?”
The men don’t have it any better – in case someone tries to interject with a ‘gender inequality’ flag. A friend of mine, who recently turned 30 (and was rather upset for turning that ‘ageing’ corner), bragged how he was working on getting “6 pack abs”.
“Like Shah Rukh Khan?” I asked innocently, with the age factor far from my mind. “Are you crazy?” my friend almost shrieked. “That guy’s soooooo old, he’s almost 50, he can’t be my role model, he’s an uncle!”
If there is anything that confounds me more than the sneering way middle-agers are treated, it is the very definition of middle age.
What is middle age?
It should, ideally, be that cusp that lies somewhere in the middle of your well-spent life. So, if you had been born in the Bronze and Iron Ages, you could have had a midlife crisis while you were about 12 or 13. General life expectancy was 26.
Today, the global median for life expectancy is about 67, so middle age should set in around 32-33, right? But why doesn’t it? Just the other day, I heard someone say something about “young people” in the age bracket of 20 to 44. Huh?
And there’s some more confusion. Life expectancies vary from country to country (depending on quality of life – and healthcare). In the UAE, it is pegged at around 77. In the UK, 81. In India, it’s 66. So if I lived in India, with my middle age peaking at 33 and then forthwith moved to London, would I be back to being young for the next seven years – because out there middle age would be best rounded at 40?
Despite the world’s ageist ambivalence – and despite smart alecs saying once in a while “You’re as old as you feel” (yeah, right, why not start with how being middle-aged feels?) – middle age is a comforting thought. It’s a buffer.
That ground which you can stretch as you will, given the bundle of contradictions it espouses, to soak up your (remaining) youthful energy and prep you up for the stepping into the sphere of silver linings.
I leave you with a quote by Theodore Roosevelt to ponder over: “The only time you really live fully is from 30 to 60. The young are slaves to dreams; the old, servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.”
Well said, Mr Roosevelt, but now I need to call my just-turned 30 friend and inform him that he and King Khan are on the same age platform: the middle one.
(Sushmita Bose is Khaleej Times’ features editor and editor of wknd. Magazine, [email protected])
