Avoiding a Mid Life Crisis

Jumping out of my car at the local Target store, I saw a woman in her mid 40s with a freshly inked tattoo in the middle of her thigh, just above her knee, saunter past me. Her hair was an unnatural purple-red hue styled in a spiky pixie cut. If you’d seen her, you would have thought the same thing I did: “God, please don’t let that be me in 20 years.”


To this woman’s credit, it got me to thinking. How did she reach that place where a purple-red pixie cut and a new tattoo was a good decision? Her choices were those of a woman clearly in a mid life crisis.


My mother is approaching 60 and has yet to undergo that particular change. To that end, there are definitely a few of my friends’ parents I have witnessed undergo this phase in their lives. For some, it has come in the form of a divorce. For others, the crisis has come in the form of a cliché convertible sports car and a career change.


What separates the tattooed woman from my mother? The difference between compromise and sacrifice.


My mother has lived the life like that of Eat, Pray, Love’s protagonist. A true bohemian rocker chick, my mom dropped out of college early, boarded a plane to Paris with just a backpack and stayed for five years. She attended La Sorbonne, took classes at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts, modeled for artists and was a rock and roll photographer for a Parisian newspaper. She dated a law student who lived in London. Her alarm clock was the rising aroma of baking bread through her floorboards from the boulangerie below her flat.


My grandmother’s failing health summoned my mother away from her European excursion. Though separated from her Parisian life, my mother was never separated from her European lifestyle. To her credit, this has been the secret to her freedom from the mid life crisis. My mother never sacrificed her personal happiness; my mother stopped at compromises.


This is the difference that makes all the difference. Can I say with certainty my mother has not sacrificed at all in her life? Of course she has, she’s a parent; sacrifice is in the job description. When it comes to the big things, however, she hasn’t. When her marriage to my father took a turn she just couldn't personally, there was a divorce. (Who ever said a commitment to oneself and one's happiness ended in happily ever after?)


My mother’s commitment to her self and to her happiness has served her well. When her friends (and her friends’ spouses) were undergoing their personal identity crises midway through their lives (because that’s what a mid life crisis is, right?) she was their grounded touchstone lightheartedly sipping champagne. When you know yourself the way my mother does, you understand the difference between compromising (for something or someone) and sacrificing your happiness. Most importantly, you don’t find yourself far away from your dreams at 50.


Sacrifice, by definition, is the act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy. So often sacrifice instead entails giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worth by someone else. Compromise, however, is a middle state between conflicting opinions or actions reached by mutual concession or modification. It involves both sides making concessions. In any relationship, even with yourself, compromises and sacrifices happen. The key is not to lose yourself in either transaction but to understand when compromise or sacrifice is best.