Middle Age Crisis and the Fact

Kathmandu : Many young Nepali people cherish the song Chalis Katesi Ramaula… By Hemanta Rana, thinking that if we have no time in our adulthood, still we will have the next life span for enjoyment, i.e. after forty, as the song stated. This would be a smash in a little entry of middle age. Ops no! Again we suddenly get entered into a crisis span of life and there may not be the next span for the merriment after sixty or so. We become baby boomers. No Time to cherish!

Along with these all hits on the mind and After my recent columns on generation disparity, generation ‘Y’ and other different social facts, I’ve been asked myself many times to write about middle-aged life. This span of life is seen as a crisis and self-doubt period in life run.

The middle age span varies according to the country, its people, gender or in total the life expectancy of the people of a particular nation, the role they play in the family and the society etc. In some countries people say middle age starts after forty, some suggest it only starts after sixty. Whatsoever, it is the lifetime next to adulthood and the period of real parenthood. 

To write this article and blend it into the Nepalese context, I did a little search about the middle-sense span. Most of my respondents’ react: it falls in between thirty-five to fifty. I even agree with them. Some baby boomers still do not accept it and say: we are in middle age. They probably say we are not old aged, see the youngness we deserve. Still, this is the courage they are bearing. Hats off!

In our context when you enter middle age you should shoulder the responsibility. You could not live on your own. You have the family, you have your parents and small children. Your seniors want to see you bloom and you want to see the happiness of juniors. At this time you should produce the bread and need to divide it into cuts. Your success is judged by how happy your dependents are. That’s middle life. 

The middle-age period is the middle sense. Middle-sense is like the adolescent period. In the latter, we jump to adulthood with different growth, change & development in physical nurturing. In the former, middle sense, we even jump on it crossing the adult age. The physical growth stops and crisis starts with life meaning. Here is the count about social life.  

Everyone realizes his life struggle in between thirty-five to fifty. It is the prime of life and the stage of fulfillment. It is the blooming span of life. If we have cultivated ‘good things’ in adulthood then we can grow much in this middle age. So the success of middle age heavily depends on the success of adult age. Whatsoever we do in this age this is the span/time of struggle. 

Most psychologists agree this is the stage of struggle. Adulthood is the cultivation time and middle age is the harvesting period of life. What we have cultivated in the former that we can harvest in the letter life.

People have manic behaviors in this period, they are frantically busy, hectic and slow the manic grin. So it is a depressive crisis. Particularly in this time, we either cut into the success of the life or fall into the dump. So it is a deadline decade of life.

We, Nepali people, have our ‘HAVE TO’ to go foreign country for labour working. Those who have remained back also spent time playing carom board, browsing Facebook or making tiktok. Still, we put a hope to do better in future with no cultivation at present. This is just the hope of middle age. It remembers that we could not do anything at our adult and young age. So says, let’s put some hope for the engagement after forty. It just happens in our country. Generally, in a foreign country, people get many after thirty or thirty-five.

From both psychological and Biological processes, middle-age is a crisis. Up to the third five we do not care about life, we are not very serious about the shortcoming. But after thirty-five we just zoom the biological process this is also the transition of age or dynamics of transition between middle age to old age.

From other social, parental, family or personal roles, middle life span is the stress of sandwich generation. At that age, we have social pressure, parental pressure, and financial pressure and in total the pressure of making the sandwiched life beautiful and bloom it on the outmost.

In middle age, we have age anxiety and have the greatest awareness of life milestones. If we don’t get the set milestone we could be dissatisfied with our life. That is what seems like the major crisis of middle-sense. I am here right now and you?? 

-Rajan Sharma Sapkota