Recognizing that your postponed existence has transformed into your lived experience can trigger either despair or clarity. A contact phoned me in the middle of the night from Bangkok—a reasonable hour for him, an unreasonable one for me. He was forty-six years old, with all the conventional markers: a career, a home, a spouse, even a second vehicle he didn't particularly want. In a tone devoid of emotion, as though reporting a household emergency, he posed a single question: "Is this it?"
I had no ready response. I haven't reached that point myself, though I can sense it approaching. So I turned to psychological research to determine whether he was experiencing a breakdown or simply becoming aware. The answer was the latter.
The crisis you were promised
The term "midlife crisis" originated with psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques, who introduced it in a 1965 academic paper. Since then, popular culture has embraced the concept enthusiastically—the sports car, the infidelity, the ill-fitting leather jacket.
Research tells a different story. Margie Lachman has directed the Midlife in the United States study for thirty years. When her research team surveyed people over forty about experiencing a midlife crisis, roughly one quarter reported yes. But the follow-up proved revealing. When asked to describe what actually occurred, respondents cited job losses, relationship breakdowns, health crises, and parental deaths. Many of these events happened before age forty or after age fifty.
The crisis itself is genuine. However, it doesn't arrive as a predictable life stage at a predetermined age. Rather, it's random misfortune that gets retroactively labeled because the label happens to be available.
The curve moved while everyone was arguing about it
For decades, the reassuring narrative centered on the happiness curve: contentment declines through the thirties and forties, reaches its nadir around fifty, then recovers. Economist David Blanchflower documented this pattern across 145 nations, with the lowest point occurring in midlife. Hundreds of subsequent studies confirmed similar findings. The message was simple: endure the difficult years, and the trajectory improves.
What rarely surfaces in casual conversation is this: the curve is deteriorating. In 2025, Blanchflower and his team reported that in the United States and United Kingdom, the U-shaped pattern has flattened into a straightforward upward trajectory. The shift stems not from midlife improvement but from a decline in younger people's wellbeing. The underlying causes remain debated—attributed variously to digital devices, labor market conditions, and reduced stigma around discussing mental health struggles.
The original assurance was merely that midlife represents the lowest point and that low points eventually end—a far more modest claim than "midlife will improve." If this pattern can transform within two decades, relying on the graph to rescue you is an unreliable strategy.
Someday is a storage unit
My grandfather maintained a boat brochure in a desk drawer. Not an actual boat—just the promotional material. Worn from repeated folding and unfolding, it traveled with him across three residences over three decades. He would occasionally retrieve it and speak about the engine specifications with the nostalgia of discussing an old acquaintance who had relocated. He never purchased the boat, and he didn't appear troubled by this fact either. Yet I find myself thinking about that drawer far more than is reasonable, because I maintain one as well. Mine exists as a note on my phone, saved since my time in London: Learn to swim properly. Read the Russians. Call people instead of messaging them.
What my friend had recognized at two in the morning was this: the existence he perpetually intended to pursue had imperceptibly shifted from being a future objective into being a collection of abandoned intentions.
The transition from aspiration to postponement happens without fanfare. That absence of a warning signal is precisely what makes it problematic. There's no moment of alarm.
What actually stays with people
Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Medvec presented an influential study in 1994: people tend to regret their actions in the short term, but their inactions in the long term. The poor choice produces immediate pain. The untried experience maintains its appeal indefinitely, since you never discover whether it would have disappointed you.
Subsequent efforts to confirm this pattern have produced inconsistent results, so consider it a compelling observation rather than established fact. A later investigation refined the finding, however. When Gilovich and Shai Davidai asked hundreds of individuals to identify their deepest regret, approximately three quarters pointed to something related to the person they'd wanted to become rather than obligations they'd neglected. This represents a single set of studies, so approach it with appropriate caution. Yet it resonates.
Make someday smaller
The unhelpful guidance here is "pursue your passion," which has never assisted anyone with financial obligations. Instead, extract one item from your list and compress it until it fits within a normal weekday.
You aspired to be a writer. Acceptable. Not a novel. Four hundred words, one time, imperfectly. You dreamed of relocating. Don't abandon your current residence. Spend two weeks there during the most unpleasant season, handling routine tasks like laundry and grocery shopping, and assess whether the desire persists.
This approach creates momentum. It also permits some aspirations to be discarded honestly. I learned I don't actually want to learn guitar. I want to be someone who has learned guitar—an entirely distinct aspiration that's far simpler to release once you recognize the distinction.
What I told my friend
I explained that he was conducting an inventory. The timing was incidental. The conclusion was acceptable.
Then I posed a question: if he had to select a single item from his list to pursue this month, which would it be? He paused for an extended period, which seemed promising, before mentioning something modest and somewhat vulnerable.
He's pursuing it now. Imperfectly, according to his own assessment. That's the entirety of it.
Source: Silicon Canals
