6 July 2006

© RangaShyam

I think mid-life crisis is hitting me...I hate to believe I have lived half my life, but the symptoms that seem to have engulfed me recently adhere to the various classical definition of mid-life crisis. Maybe I am wrong, this isn’t mid-life (I am 31 as I write this) and people would argue there isn’t no crisis staring me in the face. Then why do I feel this way? I am lost for ideas on what to do next in life.

 

I have had a great run for the last 10 years - spent 3.5 years in India, 3.5 years in Japan and 3 years in the US. I started the Japanese operations for my organization and grew it from 0 to about 15% of the size of the total company (we are a privately held company, so I resist from giving you solid numbers). I am adored by the management of my company that reposed a lot of faith in me and I have a good relationship with almost everybody who matters to me at work. If you had given me this script when I began my career in 1996, I would have given you an arm and a leg and taken it with the surviving arm. Still I look at what I have NOT achieved and feel inadequate. I reason with myself that all paths in life are mutually exclusive – you have to take one and forego the others, and the path I took turned out just fine, still I wonder if I would be better off today had I taken one of the paths I chose to give up.

 

On the personal front, my family is a blissful one. I started bonding with Anand (my 2 year old son) over the past year and we connect beautifully now. I cannot wait for him to wake up from his sleep/nap and start playing again. After years of crouching over a computer, Anand has given me the happiness of being active - running around, jumping on sofas and beds, playing with water and mud, and playing with colors....the whole works. Yet I feel despondent when I think I may be making the wrong choices for him - should I relocate to India so that he gets exposure to the real world, or spare him the trouble and let him grow up insulated from the everyday snags of life in India? Should I let him experience the joy of growing up with relatives and friends, let him experience the diversity of India, or should I let him grow up in the land of abundant material benefits and great infrastructure? [The comparison between the US and India seems lopsided in my statement here, it is just an off-the-cuff remark. The pros and cons of living in the US and India, relocating back to India or not, will need another article and are very personal decisions]. I am certainly not the first person to be making (taking) this decision in history, but yes, when it comes to me, I am lost. Is this a manifestation of mid-life crisis?

 

The idea of mid-life crisis was initiated by Dr. Elliot Jacques in 1965 (I guess people considered mid-life crisis symptoms as medical disorders prior to this theory, and treated it with medicines!). It is characterized by a definitive change in mindset of an individual in the 35-40 age group - fear, anxiety, doubt, helplessness take over and obviously the cheerfulness, work productivity, ability to communicate for the individual is impacted. People react to this in different ways - some wrap themselves into a cocoon, others look for means to escape it (turning to God, God-men, religion, taking a sabbatical, going back to school, change industries or line of work...). Naturally, you can categorize these reactions in many ways - Destructive & Constructive, Active & Passive, Obvious and Covert. A classical example that I related to is cricketers retiring. A good cricketer retires at around exactly the age when Dr. Jacques theorized - and you see them doing radically different things when they near this stage - Ian Botham started climbing mountains for a cause, Steve Waugh started getting more involved with charity, Saeed Anwar turned to more conservative and strict practitioner of Islam, Yousuf Youhana converted to Islam from being a Christian (at least if you were to believe his version!).

 

I am wondering if there is a more simple reaction to mid-life crisis. Can I just sit by and wait for it to tide over? What if I pretend there is no crisis and it is all just in my head. Can I choose to react to it only when it manifests itself in a way that I can recognize for sure to be a crisis – a bad appraisal, a lost job, whatever…I sometimes do sincerely believe I am over-reacting. When I am in this frame of mind, I tend to believe Dr. Jacques’ theory a hoax. I am complicating things way beyond they actually are. Maybe I should not think so much. I should just go with the flow and face the consequences as and when. But that is not me. It takes all kinds to make this world – and I am the one who loves to think on all subjects, I love to argue with myself and make opinions. So how do you think I am going to get out of this thought process? My guess is I will have to make a change so radical that I get absorbed in it and do not recognize the presence of a mid-life crisis. But this requires getting out of the comfort zone, which is easier said than done. But in this context, the term “comfort zone” is an oxymoron. It is the comfort zone that is leading to the discomfort. The comfort zone leads to the fear that the comfort may not last, so I am already out of the comfort zone! Am I making sense anymore? I guess I should stop writing, for I don’t make sense to myself! S.T.O.P.

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©RangaShyam, 2006