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How to Avoid a Mid-Life Crisis
In order to avoid a mid-life crisis, try not to live more than forty years. Starting around third grade, you may experience a minor crisis at some point throughout every school year. Many of these will occur naturally. If needed, manufacture a minor crisis on occasion. For example, you may need to encourage someone you like not to reciprocate, or ask someone you are dating to break up with you. You might have to ask a close friend to move away. You may need to break a bone or two. Nothing huge. Maybe a pinky. You might have to fail in a particularly important sporting moment. You may need to ask a bully or group of bullies to threaten you. Better if they are small bullies. By experiencing these moments of crisis on a consistent basis earlier in life, you might be adequately prepared for the general existential dread that accompanies most humans in their forties and early fifties. The key to avoiding deeper depression or more permanent levels of anxiety is to intersperse light-hearted times with friends, joyful moments with those you trust, and confidence-building moments in school and extra-curricular activities throughout these early years. A human needs to experience all shades of psychological development early in order to prepare for the metaphysical canyon that likely awaits them in middle life.
We are always (partially) children that we were, but most of us have become more adept at…
