What We Once Were … What We Might Have Been

I recently turned 38. That isn’t particularly remarkable in itself, but for some reason this number and the approach to it, have left me having more of a midlife crisis than I would ever have thought possible for myself. Now, this is still far from a “Homer Simpson-style” midlife panic, but it has led to some serious introspection. And given that I am already prone to serious introspection on the best of days, this pushes me further along the path and makes for some even deeper thinking.

https://youtu.be/wZqX25K3Ue0?t=81

One moment of introspection came from this video itself. Homer claims to be 38.1 years old in this video, putting him merely a comedic tenth of a year ahead of me in this moment. That odd coincidence was lost in my brain’s memory banks, which had forgotten this exact age mentioned. I’d thought it was 36 or 37, or, in other words, an age I’d already passed. This clip is now twenty years old. I almost certainly saw it first when it originally aired, meaning that I was 18 then. The Simpsons during this time period wrote episodes with such comedic brilliance that the every day and mundane could be transformed. And many of the jokes in this episode, funny then, are funnier now as they skewer my own moments of doubt as I hit that “magical” number.

Fortunately, my introspection has led to relatively few doubts to skewer. I am not bemoaning a life (or half life) wasted. Nor am I regretting the things I will certainly never be able to do. I am, and always have been, quite content with my lot in life. And that is, I think, where my ruminations have taken a more productive turn that I wish to share.

On my actual 38th birthday, I was on a business trip attending a conference. One of the conference speakers, a practicing psychologist and also a fairly gifted speaker, was talking about his own life story and bringing in some Jungian philosophy. Specifically, the concept of first and second halves of life. If I, turning 38 in my chair during this presentation, wasn’t experiencing a midlife crisis already, he was doing his best to help me on my way.

It’s worth noting that I was one of the youngest people in the audience, so I wasn’t this psychologist’s target demographic as he worked his way through the presentation. It’s also fair to note that the Jungian concept of halves of life is completely age independent. A 24-year-old can easily be in the Jungian second half of life, and a 70-year-old can still be trapped in the first half, because these halves are based on certain mental traits, social interactions, and understanding of self–not on age.

A meditation on Jung’s concept of self and ensuring we act in accordance with our true desires is a useful place to go, but I went elsewhere. I returned to another piece of media I saw when I about 18, and one I’ve written about here before.

Dark City is the source of my title. Dr. Schrieber is providing the necessary exposition to John and Detective Bumstead about the fact that everyone in Dark City is a transplant from somewhere else; somewhere they have been forced to forget. In slightly more abstracted terms, a psychologist is talking to a man and his companion about the nature of the world they inhabit, and connecting it, tenuously, to the possibilities of a life that existed, and perhaps still exists, just with out them.

A midlife crisis is about fear. It’s about fear that we are going to run out of time to do the things we want. It’s about fear that we’ve already missed out on something crucial–some part of life that we should have, or feel entitled to have, is slipping away from us. This can be a source of ridicule. When a man in the throes of his midlife crisis buys a hot rod, it doesn’t make him suddenly more virile, or restore the opportunity to live a carefree life he missed when he was twenty. Such an effort is doomed to fail. If we weren’t carefree at twenty, we cannot reclaim it at 38. We always revert to our true selves.

I don’t fear the second half of my life, nor am I particularly disappointed in my first half. But even I do have to wonder about the choices that I have made. Unless we are on the path to sainthood, there are times when we make decisions we regret. And each of those decisions comes with an opportunity cost in our life. Even the decisions we don’t regret come with those opportunity costs and they can be quite significant. The best choice in the world still precludes the second best choice, which was pretty darn good. Going to one college, studying one field, getting one job, marrying one person, all of these are moments in the first half of life where we block ourselves off, often with full intention, from other paths. Looking back, with vision clouded by the mystique of the past, rose-tinted glasses, and of course with full capacity to see the grass on the other side being greener than in our own pasture, not to mention the benefit of our 20/20 hindsight, it seems almost impossible not to reminisce and even to regret.

Had I but made a different choice, who could I have been? What might I have done, if I were somewhere different? Would that have been better? As counterfactuals, such moments are almost entirely worthless to spend much time thinking about. Where it does provide a brief moment of worthwhile consideration is in the opportunity to allow a portion of ourselves to voice a desire that we typically bury. “I’m not going to buy a hot rod, it’s impractical,” can give way to the reminder that “but I really want one.” Not everything in life needs to be practical to have meaning. We are built of logic and emotions.

Carl Jung says we have two halves to life. But there’s another lifetime theory that I also like and spend time thinking about, and I think it serves as a worthwhile counter. Click through this link below and read the comic in its entirety over at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-09-02

We make choices at every step of the way, but in particular between these lives or even if Jung is more correct, between halves of our lives. The choices we make define our boundaries, but not us. They can help show what kind of person we are, but are impenetrable to observation, even by ourselves, in the Heisenberg sense. We can be fairly confident we know where we are, or where we are going; but not both at the same time. And sometimes the only way we get to observe them at all is through our emotions. A sense that something “is wrong.” Or that an element is out of balance.

We have to know balance, and not just in the sense of moderation. If the reminiscing reminds us more of the things we left behind, we must regain focus on the things we chose. Each choice was made with full intent, even if misguided, or based on limited information. By our nature, we choose good. Remembering the good of each choice made is harder than fantasizing about the good we left behind. Reminiscing only helps in that it can inform our future decisions, allowing us to choose what is best in front of us now.

There must be balance in those choices and in our recollections. Those two questions, return to the central concerns. “What we once were.” Was I different before? Or do I return to the central “me”? If I am as I always was, how could I have chosen differently? “What we might have been.” Could I have been someone else? Certainly, but not without giving up who I am now. The concept of “me” that would make a decision to return to a choice that makes a different “me,” is essentially forsaking his own identity. It can be fun to reminisce, but it takes a self-loathing to actually want to go through with it.

So, in a way, it does come back to Jung. There is a time for reminiscing, and the half-way point of life seems like a reasonable one. But for those who do, it’s worth not dwelling on it too long. There is genuinely no going back, and even if there were some prospect for it, none of us could choose it while remaining true to our current selves. We have to remember that we chose what we truly wanted when we made our decisions the first time. Time spent reminiscing always needs to turn back to a balanced place and remove the scales from our eyes about the good we have already chosen, and live in and with. A good that we too often fail to see because it is common and every day, but no less important. And fundamentally, the greater good that we did choose, when we had that choice.