How to avoid a midlife crisis self-destruct

A MySpace friend once asked me how I avoided my midlife crisis. So I thought about that. I'm well past the age for it - if this is the middle of my life, I should live to be 110, and that ain't happenin' friends.

How did I avoid my midlife crisis?

I don't know. I kind of have this view of life that may be a little different. That could help. Then too, I had the advantage that when I should have been having it, my ex-wife apparently had hers instead, so the truly important things had their proper perspective for me.

See, I think what usually happens is that when you reach a certain age - not really old yet, but your prime is far enough behind that you understand mortality - you realize that youth isn't eternal after all, and gee, what if you're missing something. Other people have gorgeous babes and you don't - you're stuck with this woman who doesn't appreciate you or have sex with you often enough, and the next thing you know, if you're not careful, you're feeling sorry for yourself and objectivity goes out the window. You forget to consider that the proverbial grass on the other side may not be all it looks to be, and might be full of ticks and chiggers and sexy-but-evil bitches, and that you really have it pretty good with this person beside you who, incidentally, is tired too. Life isn't perfect for anybody, and you can forget that, and drop the treasure in your hand while you're reaching for that sparkling whatever-it-is just out of reach.

And that might have happened to me, too, if I had had a chance to choose it. I will never know. When reality is already kicking your little ass, it's hard to tell yourself it isn't waiting in the front yard for you to clean its teeth, and so you think about it with a little more objectivity, and you wait a bit before you go opening doors too quickly.

And so I feel happy about being 55, and I treasure my bride, and I enjoy being around the younger "kids" and try not to be frustrated by what they don't and can't possibly understand yet, and I am grateful that they allow me to hang around at all. I keep volunteering and staying busy, and visiting folks on MySpace, and taking fair advantage of my old age, just as the Red Hat ladies do. I cultivate that air of eccentricity so that people aren't shocked when I behave differently, and I have the freedom I never had when I was 30, because I wasn't in the theatre yet. I maintain a good sense of right and wrong, carefully arrived at, and I don't worry if somebody thinks I should do something as they do just because they say so. I choose my choices and live with the consequences, I drink because I enjoy it, I don't smoke because it's so destructive in the long term, I am careful not to hurt people (though I sometimes do inadvertently), and I'm not afraid to die. I love my friends to the risk of being hurt, and if I get hurt, that's life too. And every once in a while... not too often... I engage in run-on sentences. Deal with it.

So life is good, you see.