Links du jour:
Observations, resources, midlifer of the month
History, culture, music, the war, the space - for the baby boom generation
Links for boomers
An essay on midlife, in several parts
Executive Women Confront Midlife Crisis
An article from 1995 about why so many midlife women are leaving corporations
sparrows in hot pursuit
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House Sparrow |
The pigeons and the blue jays are giving the house sparrows some competition on the total courtyard domination front. Swarms of pigeons have given up their usual perch on the wires across Rt. 125 and taken up a position on the roof of the building my unit is in. The blue jays squawk on in and dive bomb the house sparrows as they feed on whatever it is they find so delectable on my back steps. The blue jays are no match for the sparrows though. As I'm sitting up here in my office a blue jay streaks by the window with three house sparrows in hot pursuit. The rest of the sparrows have arrayed themselves around the courtyard. One house finch hangs around my fence looking very out of place. These little red guys (house finches) are a desert bird that established a population here when some of their ancestors escaped from pet captivity. What does this have to do with midlife? Well, I wouldn't be sitting home watching sparrows chase blue jays if I weren't having a midlife crisis, now would I? |
midlife crisis?
On The Connection this morning they're discussing midlife crises with Margaret Morganroth Gullette, author of Declining to Decline: Cultural Combat and the Politics of Midlife. She asks "Are midlife crises culturally driven?" She thinks they are, hyped by the media, something with which to tame people. Also on the show, by phone, is Gail Sheehy, author of Passages.
So I listen to the discussion and conclude that I don't know a darn thing about midlife even though I'm in the middle of it. Would somebody just tell my arthritic knee to decline to decline? Just say no to aging! Why aren't I buying this? Sheehy wasn't entirely buying it either. It's one thing to change your attitude toward aging, and to refuse to be stereotyped and cast aside at midlife and a whole 'nother thing to deny mortality. Americans think we can be immortal if only we eat right, exercise right, eat blue green algae, and read the Bible. Get real. Suffering, old age, and death are the human condition.
I think listening to this silliness about simply saying no to aging irritated me more than usual because of the juxtaposition with today's news of the kid at MIT who died of alcohol poisoning and the local North Andover girl, a high school senior, who fell down the stairs while drunk and died of a fractured skull. They'll never get to experience midlife with its insights and its travails. What a waste! A freshman at MIT should have the world by the tail, not drink himself to death at a frat party. News to kids: alcohol can kill you. Maybe some sociologist should study whether alcohol poisoning is culturally driven. Newsflash: kids respond to peer pressure.
The odd thing is that both the midlife denial folks and the teen drinkers have delusions of immortality. The kids think the bad things will never happen to them. The midlifers think they can positive-think themselves into feeling no different at 45 than at 25. Personally I am damn glad I feel different than I did at 25. Oh I wouldn't mind having a 25 year old knee instead of a 46 year old one, but I wouldn't trade what I've learned for a little bit of cartilage.
I don't lie about my age. I am 46 years old and proud of it. I have gray hair. A lot of it. Big deal. Would I cover the gray for a job interview? No. OK, so I am in my own way "declining to decline" in the sense that I won't let my age get in the way of doing what I want to do. Sure, I'm self-conscious about being old - especially when I was at the cyberpunk reading on Sunday, and even more so at Anime Crash looking for Godzilla movies - but I'm not retiring to a rocking chair on the porch to await my inevitable decline. On the other hand, I can't ignore the fact that there is almost no cartilage left in my knee and I need arthritis meds to get thru a normal day. I have to deal with it. I can't "just say no".
Gullette even denied there's such a thing as menopause, claiming it's cultural. Hmm, women's attitudes and responses to menopause are cultural, but even in the most positive affirming societies women stop menstruating at some point. We do not remain fertile and capable of childbearing forever. That doesn't mean we're in decline. It just means that physiological function is over. And yes, there are symptoms associated with that. There may be cultural differences in how we feel about the symptoms, or how we deal with them, but they do exist.
It could just be that Gullette doesn't interview well. Maybe I oughta read the book, but it doesn't seem to be widely available. Besides, I might throw it across the room and break something i care about.
I did some web searching on "midlife" and found a lot of links specifically aimed at so-called baby boomers who are entering midlife around now. Some are interesting, some are entertaining, none really enlightened me on the subject. I guess I just have to go through my own midlife to understand it.
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