Coming to terms with ‘Midlife’
Setiya is a professor of Philosophy at MIT and found himself staring at ‘midlife crisis’ at the ripe age of 35. This book was borne to come to terms with his own angst — “Up till now, life has seemed an endless upward slope, with nothing but the distant horizon in view. Now suddenly I seem to have reached the crest of the hill, and there stretching ahead is the downward slope with the end of the road in sight.”
So what’s the solution? It’s simple, just change your perspective. Setiya argues that a rich life lived is bound to have regrets and losses - “To wish for a life without loss is to wish for a profound impoverishment in the world or in your capacity to engage with it,”. He further prompts, “ embrace your losses as fair payment for surplus of being alive”.
In subsequent pages, he brings forth the concept of telic and atelic activities that quite caught my attention. Setiya finds that there’s something intrinsically self-defeating about getting things done. Once you’ve done them, you can’t do them anymore. “Having a child, writing a book, saving a life — the completion of your project may be of value, but it means that the project can no longer be your guide,”. Telic activities are goal oriented and temporal in nature. Atelic activities is something you do for its own sake like walking in the woods. Certain middle-aged habits — golf, yoga, gardening — can help to create an atelic mind-set.
Earlier I read the book ‘Ikigai’ and it outlines that the happiest people are those for whom the reward is the act of doing the task (that they love) itself. There is a similar parallel to Setiya’s suggestion in this book. Life journey is atelic but life needs direction too — goals to accomplish, project to complete, desires to be fulfilled. The trick is to pair up the telic activities (your goals, projects etc) with their atelic counterparts. For eg, if your goal is to write a book on philosophy by 2020, finishing the book is a telic activity but reading and thinking about philosophy during the course of writing is atelic and will provide enrichment during the act itself.
Journey itself is the reward, and if that’s the case, then living in the present with mindfulness is all there is. Ultimately, Happiness is a function of autonomy, relationship and pursuit of something larger than self.
In closing, quoting from the book “So long as your actual life is good enough, and you are sufficiently risk-averse, it is perfectly rational to be content with how things are, even though they could have been much better ..”
