Personal Note: I Missed My Midlife Crisis
I got my hair trimmed for the first time in almost three years yesterday. I’ve jokingly called it my mid-life crisis hair, but it’s not really a joke.
There’s a theoretical point where we stop thinking about life in years since birth and start thinking about it in years till death. I’m definitely past that point, and I’ve always understood a mid-life crisis to be about death: life is going to end and there are things we want to do.
For some men, it’s about a sports car or sailboat. For others it’s world travel, or a new wife. For me, somehow, it’s the hair.
I was sharing this with Declan while he was seasoning a pork chop. He said he liked my hair, which, from a 16-year-old, meant more to me than I care to admit. While I was still processing that he said:
“You know, though, the true midpoint of life is actually around age 22, right?”
What? I was incredulous, but I’ve learned not to dismiss him so easily now that he’s taking all these AP courses (or who am I kidding, it’s probably YouTube), so I asked him to explain.
He calmly summarized three theories about how time accelerates as we age, and with each one, I felt more and more uncomfortable.
First, a proportional theory. “When you’re 10, one year is 10% of your entire life, but at 50, that same year is 2% of your life. Every year becomes a smaller fraction of the whole, so each one feels faster than the last.”
OK, I thought, that’s some nice mathematical sleight of hand, but I told him I didn’t find it very persuasive, so he gave me another one, a theory of firsts. “Childhood is full of novel experiences, but for adults life becomes routine.” When nothing's new, our brains don't bother encoding the memories. Similar days get lumped together and time just disappears.
That one landed harder. I've been experiencing this for a while: every year faster than the last, time collapsing in on itself. And I worry that I’m not doing enough, just living the same week over and over again.
Finally, brain processing speed, and I knew what was coming. “As the brain ages, it processes information more slowly. The outside world appears to speed up around us because we’re slowing down inside.”
"Dude," I said. He'd just named what I've been experiencing: forgetting names mid-conversation, losing my train of thought, watching my brain work harder to do less.
He smiled and went back to cooking his pork chop.I watched him ladle garlic butter, while droplets of oil flared brightly for an instant before vanishing into the flames.
