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Honest question. Is midlife crisis and/or burn out a problem that you face only when you can afford it? I am a frist generation immigrant in the US. I do ok fo

Honest question. Is midlife crisis and/or burn out a problem that you face only when you can afford it? I am a frist generation immigrant in the US. I do ok for myself and am at a vantage point of seeing my peers etc have these issues but I also can't forget that my parents worked much harder for much less, with similar, if not lot more stresses, and I don't think it was even an option for my mom/dad to have the luxury of burnout or on a midlife crisis, even therapy would have been an expense to think twice about. They worked Saturdays as well, had much worse commutes, longer hours and they barely even took vacations etc. as much as me and my peers now. They seem to have done ok for themselves and are reasonably happy, and fine in their older age now. Are these just problems that one faces only after they have certain comforts in life and can afford to have such problems?

shannifin 3y ago
Short answer: it may certainly be the case that growing up in first-world countries more easily primes people for later midlife crises with their greater societal focus on wealth, status, fame, materialism, etc. Longer answer: I don't think it's a matter of "affording" or "not affording" per se, but likely depends on your younger-self's expectations and life goals, which are completely free and up to you, you can desire and daydream about whatever you want (though environment and nature of upbringing will certainly have an influence); the "crises" comes from realizing that your expectations and hopes may very well never come to fruition, and whether or not you can deal with that. Maybe they were unrealistic or selfish expectations to begin with and you should let them go, maybe you actually made some serious life mistakes with big costs and have to accept that. Maybe you're still caught up in bad habits and have to reassess your values. Whether or not you can "afford" any of that is also up to you. So it likely depends on what exactly your earlier expectations and life goals were, and how important they were/are to your self-perception.
Gareth321 3y ago
> Is midlife crisis and/or burn out a problem that you face only when you can afford it? Yes. See Maslow’s Hierarchy.
derbOac 3y ago
I think it depends on what you mean by "you can afford it". At some level that's the nature of midlife crisis, identifying what it is you have and what you want, and what you can have. If you are happy with what you have despite all its costs, it's not really a crisis because you've identified that as such. Even if you're not entirely happy with it but you recognize that it is a net good for you and your family, there's no crisis either. If some things you identified as benefits before are now seen as serious costs — to family, children, morality, or integrity, among other things — but there's an easy and painless way to rectify things, there's also no crisis. The problem — the crisis — is in recognizing or believing that what you once saw as good things are actually costly, but rectifying it is also fraught with large and probably unknown costs. Maybe you've realized the vocation you're in is actually rife with immorality and corruption, or maybe you've realized that your career has completely cost your children precious, limited time with a good family, or whatever, but you've gotten so far along that the costs and likelihood of changing careers are also great. That's the nature of the crisis. At some level I think you could say it's a crisis of privilege but I don't think so. I think it comes anytime a set of life choices, over a long time and with many costs, leads one to a position of deep dissatisfaction and realization that there's limited time to right things. My sense is that doesn't really depend on socioeconomic status necessarily. The other side of it is there are apparently studies showing similar mood changes over the course of life happen in completely other species, so there's an argument that it really has nothing to do with existential or sociological issues at all and is very biological. Based on my own experiences that seems hard to believe though; my guess is midlife crises can happen for many different reasons, and aren't limited to midlife.

shannifin 3y ago

Short answer: it may certainly be the case that growing up in first-world countries more easily primes people for later midlife crises with their greater societal focus on wealth, status, fame, materialism, etc. Longer answer: I don't think it's a matter of "affording" or "not affording" per se, but likely depends on your younger-self's expectations and life goals, which are completely free and up to you, you can desire and daydream about whatever you want (though environment and nature of upbringing will certainly have an influence); the "crises" comes from realizing that your expectations and hopes may very well never come to fruition, and whether or not you can deal with that. Maybe they were unrealistic or selfish expectations to begin with and you should let them go, maybe you actually made some serious life mistakes with big costs and have to accept that. Maybe you're still caught up in bad habits and have to reassess your values. Whether or not you can "afford" any of that is also up to you. So it likely depends on what exactly your earlier expectations and life goals were, and how important they were/are to your self-perception.

Gareth321 3y ago

> Is midlife crisis and/or burn out a problem that you face only when you can afford it? Yes. See Maslow’s Hierarchy.

derbOac 3y ago

I think it depends on what you mean by "you can afford it". At some level that's the nature of midlife crisis, identifying what it is you have and what you want, and what you can have. If you are happy with what you have despite all its costs, it's not really a crisis because you've identified that as such. Even if you're not entirely happy with it but you recognize that it is a net good for you and your family, there's no crisis either. If some things you identified as benefits before are now seen as serious costs — to family, children, morality, or integrity, among other things — but there's an easy and painless way to rectify things, there's also no crisis. The problem — the crisis — is in recognizing or believing that what you once saw as good things are actually costly, but rectifying it is also fraught with large and probably unknown costs. Maybe you've realized the vocation you're in is actually rife with immorality and corruption, or maybe you've realized that your career has completely cost your children precious, limited time with a good family, or whatever, but you've gotten so far along that the costs and likelihood of changing careers are also great. That's the nature of the crisis. At some level I think you could say it's a crisis of privilege but I don't think so. I think it comes anytime a set of life choices, over a long time and with many costs, leads one to a position of deep dissatisfaction and realization that there's limited time to right things. My sense is that doesn't really depend on socioeconomic status necessarily. The other side of it is there are apparently studies showing similar mood changes over the course of life happen in completely other species, so there's an argument that it really has nothing to do with existential or sociological issues at all and is very biological. Based on my own experiences that seems hard to believe though; my guess is midlife crises can happen for many different reasons, and aren't limited to midlife.