A man’s midlife crisis is a classic point of comedy.  After spending his twenties and thirties with his head bent down towards his work and daily concerns, he suddenly looks up once he reaches his forties and fifties, only to realize he’s mortal and has a finite amount of time to live the life he wants to call his own.  Corvettes, motor boats, and sudden shifts in music and clothing are some of the more comical symptoms featured in this chapter of life.

As humorous as it may be to see a middle-aged man attempt to be something he’s not, could it be that this urge has a deeper and more meaningful source?  In my experience, more often than not these shifts we feel as we get older are good, though they can easily become funneled into unhealthy behavior.

In the complicated fabric of our economy, a society that celebrates a stark play-hard, work-hard dichotomy, it’s easy to become reactive early on in life when you’re trying to make a beginning.  But sooner or later anyone with an ounce of reflection will wonder whether there must not be something more, some greater purpose. When will I take responsibility for a life that has perhaps up to this point been on a sort of auto-pilot? 

There’s nothing like the gift of mortality to stimulate this reflection.

This shift in perspective is caricatured in all sorts of silly ways.  The guy who relentlessly tries to retrieve his childhood through toys, vacations, or other prizes has followed this urge down its most superficial path. This unfortunately becomes more tragic than comic when that man is a father.  The fear and selfishness of this superficial pursuit of youth is always at the expense of his family and children.  Often he has to reject his children and family because they are a reminder that he is not so young any more, and his life is filled with responsibilities.

But I would argue that the man who seeks to be better, more heroic, as he realizes that his time is limited, his strength is finite, and his children need to have a father who strives to be his best self is going through a crisis in the best sense of the word.  “Crisis” in this sense means a decisive, critical point on the path of life, and that’s precisely what happens when we come face-to-face with our mortality.

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Many men die at age 30 but are buried once they’re 80.” There comes a day when we have a choice: Are we going to be the living dead, or are we going to strive to become our best selves and aim to offer the gift of memory of a great father to our children?