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I’m proud of how mild-mannered my midlife crisis is. While the cliche involves the purchase of a Porsche or a frantic fling with a colleague, I’ve mainly fallen back into the geeky preoccupations of my youth, such as founding poetry clubs and playing niche racket sports. Nevertheless, on the cusp of turning 50, and having just been beaten by my 11-year-old at Scrabble, I’m thrilled to have found a book that addresses my small struggle: an elegant discourse on the deep wisdom that I’m hoping will characterise my remaining years.
First, the author, a clinical psychologist named Frank Tallis, diagnoses the problem. Following some of the arguments in Ernest Becker’s 1973 study The Denial of Death, he proposes that such crises are at least partly the result of the western reluctance to face mortality. In Britain, we eschew open coffins, for instance. When our relatives die, as my mother did two years ago, they die in a hospital rather than at home. We can hardly even bring ourselves to say “die”, preferring euphemisms such as “pass away”. In this Instagram age, our lives are dominated by filters and distractions. The crisis strikes when reality can’t be held at bay any longer. We lose our parents. Then we notice, inevitably, that we are now at the front of the queue.
Next, the author offers comfort where it’s needed. The transformative message of this short, thought-provoking book is that, rather than regarding such a mental logjam as shameful, we can embrace and even recast it as heroic. As the author Joseph Campbell pointed out, the myth that recurs across cultures sees a hero descending to the underworld. This literal and figurative low point turns out to be a pivotal moment, leading to triumphs and resolutions of the second act. In Homer, I now realise, it is while visiting the land of the dead that Odysseus first learns that his mother has died. Comparably, the opening of Dante’s Inferno is: “In the middle of life’s journey, I found myself in a dark wood, unable to discover the path ahead.”
A midlife crisis doesn’t seem so bad after learning that Odysseus and Dante had one. And Carl Jung, for that matter. The Swiss psychologist had a breakdown in his late 30s, then conveniently decided that such an ordeal was a necessary “descent to the underworld”, preceding the fertile plains of mature life, where we may find peace through wisdom.
So what is wisdom, exactly? The structure of this book, which proceeds chronologically through the standard stages of a midlife crisis and what follows (Chapter 1: Denial, Chapter 2: Acceptance, etc), hints that an answer may be forthcoming towards the end. Yet Tallis ultimately ducks it, preferring to keep his opinions to himself. As Nietzsche noted: “No one can build you the bridge on which you and only you must cross the river of life.” One rare swoop into the personal is the author’s confession that, in his late teens, he was hoodwinked into joining a cult (“it was the 1970s,” he explains apologetically), loosening ties with his family and making regrettable financial donations, much to the dismay of his father.
As the psychoanalyst and author Anthony Storr once remarked, a striking number of self-proclaimed messiahs found their calling while in the grip of a midlife crisis. Although this is a psychological knight’s move that is probably best avoided, it is true that the search for meaning can save us. Some branches of therapy are devoted to it, inspired by Viktor Frankl’s observation, during his time in the Nazi camps, that the inmates who survived longest were those who clung on to some sense of meaning amid the mindless butchery.
What will I take away from Wise, apart from the memory of remaining gripped throughout its 200-plus pages? It’s too soon to say. Perhaps to live more in the company of death, as the Stoics advised, to make it less of a monster. Probably to read some books that get named here, like Frankl’s and Becker’s. And undoubtedly to reread this one, which I sincerely recommend.
