The Original Mid-Life Crisis Was Not About Porsche 911s and Buying Red Trainers

I’m sitting in a café in Brera, Milan. A small wooden table, the legs balanced on the cobbled streets. I’m alone. Liv flew back to Bangkok this morning. In front of me is a plate of pasta, half eaten. In my hand a book. A book, half in Italian with English translations alongside it. I’m halfway through it, but I again flick back to the first page, re-reading the sentences I’ve underlined.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita,

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

ché la diritta via era smarrita.

When I had journeyed half of our life’s way,

I found myself within a shadowed forest,

For I had lost the path that does not stray.

The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri, Canto I (14th Century).

The Original Mid-Life Crisis

We are all familiar with the stereotype. The 50-year-old guy buying a Porsche 911 and a pair of red trainers. But this halfway-point-of-adult-life is too late for a crisis. Why have your mid-life-crisis when your kids have already left home and you have just the twilight of your career left?

But, the original mid-life crisis was not about sports cars and colourful trainers.

The original mid-life crisis is and always will be around your 30th birthday. And it isn’t reserved for men. In Dante’s time – 14th century Renaissance Italy – life expectancy was 60 years old if you were rich. So half of our life’s way was very much your 30th birthday.

We Have A Child’s Brain Until Our Late Twenties

Dante was onto something from a neuroscience point of view as well. In our 20s we look outwards for validation. We look to the world and say, ‘who do you want me to be.’ Up to our 30th birthday, our brain is constantly building neural pathways, solidifying them and pruning unused connections. 

As we progress into our 30s, our mind shifts and with a fully developed pre-frontal cortex we move into a more reflective state. 

With reflection comes early signs of wisdom, we usually begin a journey of realising that the identity we have created for ourselves is based on following the world’s expectations. Satisfying parents, then teachers, then friends, then universities, then organisations.

When we reach half of our life’s way, our brain supports us to move to an introspection unavailable to a teenager. ‘Who am I?’

My Shadowed Forest 

As I read and re-read those sentences in the Divine Comedy, I reflect onto the last few years of my life, my shadowed forest and my path. It would be easy to say my ‘shadowed forest’ was working my career and realising I was selling unhealthy food to children. Yet, it would be too easy to say that – I loved my time there, the pace, the people, the challenge.

I found myself within a shadowed forest.

Too often we try to point at one single cause – it is easier for our brains to understand that. For me, it was more a feeling that the world has always given more to me than I have given in return. My career has always been about learning and my personal growth. I have never looked at my years in consulting and corporate and thought, how can I make the world a better place. My shadowed forest was not burnout, it was not a slap around the face, it was a mismatch between potential and purpose. Yet knowing something is not the same as doing. 

I needed agency and as is usually the case, inspiration came from adventure. Sat in the driver’s seat of our Toyota Hilux, the white paint stained red by the desert dust of Namibia, Liv and I listened to the incredible Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. As the hours of bumps passed underneath us, I knew that as soon as we returned from that trip I needed to do what he’d done since his mid-twenties. Not to take as many drugs or play the bongos naked, but to start recording my life by journalling. That was my Greenlight, my first drip in the bucket.

“We cannot fully appreciate the light without the shadows. We have to be thrown off balance to find our footing.”

Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

Catch The Drips And Let Your Purpose Take Care Of Itself

You won’t be as clear headed as Steve Jobs, having epiphanies to make the world’s best computer. Instead, the first step out of the forest is to figure out who we are, and that starts with what we love. Don’t spend your time ruminating over lack of passion, spend it recording what you love, what you are passionate about. Move the bucket to catch the drips. 

Drips are those small moments when you quietly think to yourself, ‘that’s cool’. One drip into the palm of your hand quickly evaporates. Quickly forgotten. Catching the drips in your bucket means noting things down with intention. Journalling or sharing your curiosities with someone.

In Milan I’m catching drips. One morning I am at the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana checking out Leonardo da Vinci’s journal of inventions (read more about da Vinci’s amazing range in this previous post here) . The next morning I’m with the incredible Nikos where we discuss our Wildest Dreams. That evening, I meet an old friend Francesca for dinner and talk about life. The rest of the time we walk around the city, exploring. 

Catching drips. 

Those small moments for me are my inspiration. Reading and learning about the renaissance history, brainstorming the future with an amazing Greek guy, sharing life’s challenges with a good friend. 

Drips are those small moments when you quietly think to yourself, ‘that’s cool’.

When you are present enough to catch a bucket full of drips, the water can be used to wash away the dirt which covers the path. 

The bucket of drips has led me down this path of studying, researching, coaching. On a Monday morning 18 months ago, I was paid handsomely to check my emails and talk to my team. Instead, I am sat here writing a blog post that might be looked at by up to 100 people, perhaps half will make it to this sentence, maybe less. I don’t have clarity on where it will lead, but I know I’m moving towards something that matters.

The pasta’s finished. A light breeze moves through Brera, sliding the napkin off my lap and onto the cobblestones. I take a sip of water, glance again at the underlined lines in Dante. I’m still here, in the shadowed forest. But light is filtering through the canopy now, and the path ahead is just a little more visible. And that’s okay. Have your crisis early. Get your bucket, I’ve got mine and I’m catching the drips.

Deepen Your Curiosity

This week I feature two incredible books – The Women, and Wild Swans – in their own way the protagonists tell the story of entering their shadowed forest, losing the path, and finding their way out in their 30s. To read more about how we learn more from stories than textbooks, check out the bonus blog on the website. 

1. Divine Comedy, Inferno by Dante Alighieri.

2. The Women by Kristin Hannah.

3. Wild Swans by Jung Chang.