“Sense of security
Holding blunt instrument
Midlife crisis
I’m a perfectionist
And perfect is a skinned knee”
- Faith No More – “Midlife Crisis”
I awoke.
I didn’t know what I was, what the hell I was doing, but at least I was awake.
I looked around. This wasn’t the life I wanted. None of this. None of it was familiar to me, even though I’d been around it for 40 years.
The jig was up. My life, whether I wanted it to or not, was beginning.
I looked around. The wife, the house, the world….wasn’t mine. I was living it as another person.
So, I began to tear it all down. I ripped the walls apart, tore off the floors, hammered every structure around me that wasn’t nailed down. And if it was, it was burned and wiped clean.
All of it. Except my kids, had to go. Keeping any of it around meant keeping the last visages of my former life and that wasn’t me, it never was me.
My life before this, in my 20’s, was just me looking up at the stars at night and walking around, pining for that girl that would complete my life. I wasn’t concerned about success, because success was spelled out for me by my loved ones.
You had to:
- Get a job
- Get a car
- Get a college degree
- Get a house
- Get a wife
- Get kids
And all would be well. This was the life that everyone dreamed about, so naturally, when some of these parts eluded me, I would pine on how to get those parts. Because, as we’re told, if we get these missing parts, we win, right?
Wrong. Dead wrong. The men who went before me found out the same way I did that the to do list of life’s musts will not fulfill you, only complicated a man’s life, especially a man who doesn’t know any better.
A man has to want these in his life. Yes, many are a requirement to even function in society, but most are not needed for a man to feel truly fulfilled. But often, it portrayed as a list of things that men MUST do in order to feel they’ve accomplished something in life.
I have news for men out there. This list? Not even close to the list you want to have when it comes to living a fulfilling life. It’s a simplified version of a much larger span of items to “check off”.
Life is not a check list.
The Price of Ignorance
Young men these days, as in my days in the late 90’s, are still being fed the bullshit lines of living life the way society deems acceptable. Checking off the major items and then going out to pasture, as if you are a horse who’s raced in his prime and now waits to be fed and lives a boring life, or worse, waits to be made into glue.
Young men have no direction, no goals except to make money, blow it, go into debt, party, drink, do drugs, anything that takes away the idea that he needs to have a plan and execute his life. Like a boat with no oars, he just lets the ups and downs, feelings, and fun ride him down after he clocks out from his 9-5.
Now, I’m not saying this stuff is bad. I did this stuff when I was younger, but doing this stuff without any real plan or direction in a young man’s life continues to stymie his eventual growth into a man of the world.
So, when I see a young man who is grinding on HIS dreams, not someone else’s, not what society thinks he should be pursuing, I take notice. Too often young men don’t drink the water of life for their own sake, grinding towards an eventual dream of a full, real-life that he’s created, but they drink society’s Kool-Aid and burn out long before they’ve had a chance to even get started on a life they want.
The problem is that men are not taught about the importance of finding a life they want. They are chucked into the sausage making of what they are supposed to do for society to deem them a success. Look at your big time millionaires. Very seldom have these men done what society expected them to do. They started a dream that they had, despite all the odds against them.
They told society, their families, and their friends to keep their rules for how to live and they chucked it all out the window for a chance at REAL glory and success in their lives.
It’s why the number one thing on a man’s list shouldn’t be anything but throwing the yolk of society’s expectations off and shifting into 5th gear as fast as he can to get to where he wants to go.
Where HE wants to go…..not anyone else….
It’s why men like myself, who’ve been put through the ringer that society calls a success and rejected it in the form of a midlife crisis. We have much to teach the younger generation of men, including the fact that the rule book about a man’s life was always wrong. It shouldn’t be a book. It should be one page:
“Do what makes you happy, fulfilled, and successful. All other roads lead to someone else’s plan.”
Life Reassessment
A mid-life crisis or a life crisis, in general, is a misnomer and has been utilized incorrectly because, as society sees it, a man who chooses to go his own way is a problem.
The issues we see in men today is that society deems a midlife crisis as a BAD thing. A man who simply wants to push away from the plan, the matrix, if you will, is criticized, shunned, and ridiculed to the point that he is judged on why he doesn’t play nice with a perfectly good plan that many men, brainwashed by the same bullshit that he was, would be happy to have.
Men need a crisis. But it isn’t a crisis. It’s a personal assessment of his life. It needs to happen often so he can check his trajectory.
He should have every right to choose his path, regardless of what it is or where it leads. Do many men make terrible choices? Of course. But it was their choice. Our job as the older generation is to help them make the best choice they can, with the best information they can get, knowing that the choice they made is the choice they live with, but can always change.
Life’s not a fall down a drain. It’s a controlled movement to do what you feel is best for your life.
As has been said:
“Freedom of choice doesn’t mean freedom from consequences of that choice.”
But in general, I’m going to try to tell men what I feel they need to do to get better. It’s just my opinion, they are free to do anything else. But as my life has shown, I want men to take the path THEY want, with as much information as they can get, and live with their choice. But also have the option to change that choice if it doesn’t pan out.
There are many paths to a fulfilling life, and none of them are one way. You have choices, you have chances to re-calibrate, you have options, you just need the time, information, and patience to look at all of it.
You are not on anyone else’s time schedule. You take your time, you find out what you want, and you take it.
Men who are told where to go will more often than not have a “come to Jesus” moment in their lives.
Call it a crisis, but it isn’t.
Men Must Have Crises
Life assessment, not crises, is REQUIRED for all men. These are not crises, they’re simply life goals, purpose, and direction being adjusted for the situations that arise.
But men have every right to go where they want to go, do what they want to do, and do so without the condescension and judgment of those who wish them to do the “right” thing.
The right thing is a matter of perspective, and any perspective but for the man’s own is incorrect in my opinion.
He has every right to live his life under the auspices of controlling his own destiny. What he chooses to do with his life, whether it’s enjoying the decline, doing all manners of drugs and pissing away his life, or any of the countless other outcomes is completely up to him.
My job is to educate him on the path I took, not necessarily saying it’s better, but showing him that there is more to life than what he sees before him.
A man needs mentors, those who would educate him and present him options, with no strings attached, as to what he can do with his life.
The more information a man has, the more his life is in his control and he will make the best of the options he has.
Mid-life crises are necessary for this reason. A man must always be re-calibrating his life goals, mission, and trajectory.
My mid-life crisis, that of my divorce and subsequent red-pilling saved my life. It taught me that this life, for however long it goes, is mine to do with what I choose.
My choice will always be checked, re-assessed, and re-examined. That’s because doing that analysis is what is best for my future.
You must stand a post and remain constantly vigilant in your life. Always be focusing on what you can do to make it better, more fulfilling, more the way you want it.
And do not let anyone else, whether it’s society, family, friends, or others, tell you how to live your life. There isn’t a checklist that you have to tick off. There isn’t a plan you have to abide by. There isn’t a book on how to live life the right way.
It’s your call. You have every right to make it.
Make it a good one.
