In the Groove, or in a Rut?--Life in Middle Age

"Middle age is the afternoon, but I can't say I have much time to drink tea!" Sitting in the silence of his research office, Professor Li Liang-che of the psychology department at National Chengchi University appears pensive. Indeed, passing 40 is like passing noon. You miss the fresh, pure, carefree feeling of morning, and the arrogance of noon, yet also yearn for the serene splendor of the sunset. It is only now, in the afternoon, that worries crowd in, and try as you might you cannot raise your flagging spirits.

Worries, ennui-is this a case of that fashionable disease of civilization, the "midlife crisis"?

"If you're going to have a crisis, it's most likely to happen during the "midlife transition," from 40 to 45," says Li. In people of a melancholy and sensitive disposition, or who have faced many setbacks early in life, it may even set in around the age of 35.

"In the US, 35 is the maximum age for being in a fraternity," jokes National Taiwan Normal University audiovisual center director Chao Ning, who is known as a "wunderkind" in the broadcasting world. After that, your moods begin to seesaw between those of "youth" and "middle age." You are perfectly sure that you are in as good form as ever, and have not even reached your peak yet, but looking at all those talented youngsters around you, they seem even more outstanding than yourself, and more like tomorrow's rising stars. A vexing feeling of being pushed along by the years gradually builds up, until one day you find yourself high and dry on the shoals of life.

Middle age creeps up on you

"The new waves on the Yangtze River push the old waves along"-i.e. each generation outdoes the last-and in an age of rapid change, the sense of crisis this induces in the older generations is amplified.

A Mrs. Wei, who chose to leave her job as a bookkeeper five years ago because of an unexpected pregnancy, thought at the time that with her ability, experience and contacts it would not be hard for her to find a new job once her child started primary school. But as the day of her return to the world of work draws ever nearer, she feels a growing sense of panic.

"Most of my old colleagues have left, and the few I'm still in touch with talk about nothing but things like Excel spreadsheets that I know nothing about!" Mrs. Wei has hinted a few times to her husband that she should just stay at home and concentrate on looking after the children. But thinking of her husband's grim expression whenever he gives her the housekeeping money, she doesn't dare to say it plainly.

In today's society, youth is beauty. But in trying to show he was not out of touch with youth, Mr. Chou, the 45-year-old boss of a computer components company, had an experience which left him not knowing whether to laugh or cry. He arranged with his young employees to go for a barbecue in a river valley, hoping to get to know them better. But when they arrived there, the workers formed their own groups, laughing and clowning around, and left him to get on with barbecuing the meat. When it was done-and he was drenched in sweat-the young people, attracted by the aroma, gathered round. But after giving him a few words of praise, they wolfed down the food and scattered again immediately, as if he didn't even exist.

"They probably thought their old fogey of a boss had just come to wait on them!" From then on Mr. Chou, having recognized his own place in the order of things, made no more attempts to ingratiate himself with his young employees-and in fact felt much the more relaxed for it.

More crises in middle age?

"By middle age, you have more experience of life, and you are sure to have various realizations and regrets," says Li Liang-che. Even if you have no economic worries and as yet no health problems, nonetheless the flowing river of life has carried away your youth, ideals, pure love and even your loved ones, and left you with many wounds you are loth to touch and regrets you are loth to remember. The sense that the realization of past mistakes has come too late to put them right, and of your remaining days being numbered, makes you feel despondent.

But despondency need not amount to a "crisis." According to overseas research, although people have more worries in middle age, only around 15% have emotional difficulties serious enough to require psychological counseling or medication.

Sociology professor Wang Ya-ke of National Taipei University, who has always been an ardent supporter of feminism and recently became the first scholar to promote "male studies" in Taiwan, offers the following analysis: The real reason why the "midlife crisis" has become such a hot topic in the US lies with the 75 million "baby boomers" born in the postwar period from 1946 to 1964. One can say that this huge generation is the one with the highest level of achievement, and the most diverse set of values, in human history. Since they gradually began to enter middle age in the late 1980s, they have produced many reminiscences and introspective works about their own mental and spiritual journey, which have elicited a strong response.

The US's present middle-aged generation have metamorphosed from youthful anti-war protesters and hippies into yuppie managers of multinational corporations, and from idealists into materialists. The tensions and trauma of that transformation cause their "midlife crisis" to be especially complex. By contrast, although Taiwan had its own baby boom from 1951 to 1966, its middle-aged generation have not had the same life experiences, so while they too have their midlife crises, they are much less complex.

Alice Lu, director of the International Family Life Education Center, suggests that "change" would be a better term than "crisis" for the mood swings and difficulties of middle age. Midlife change, in fact, is a natural process in the journey of life, and as people grow older and have to shoulder ever heavier responsibilities, all kinds of pressures large and small appear together at this time of life.

For example, says Lu, middle-aged people are the meat in a generational sandwich. Their aging parents increasingly need care, while at the same time their teenage children are at their most rebellious. Other elements in their lives, such as their job or marriage, have been in existence for ten to 20 years; the sparkle is gone, yet they have invested too much to just walk away from them. And again, turning to look at themselves, gray hairs are sprouting from their temples and crows' feet appearing at the corners of their eyes, their jowls are sagging, and the thick, solid chest muscles of their youth have somehow migrated down to their bellies. When they take their sons out for some exercise, they don't even have the strength to do a single pull-up!

Midlife brings many uncertainties, and if it comes in a time of dramatic social change when many role models are being completely rewritten, middle-aged people may be left even more at a loss.

Life is long, the future bleak

Li Liang-che notes that firstly, life expectancy has rapidly increased. In Taiwan, average life expectancy has risen steadily from 55 years in 1951 to 75 today. As the journey of life lengthens, middle-aged people become more and more confused about their status in life.

A Mr. Chang, who lives in Hualien, is now 58, nearing the upper end of middle age. He recalls that when he saw his parents at age 60 he thought they were "ever so old," and they seemed quite content to dandle their grandchildren, oblivious to the affairs of the world. But now that he is approaching the same age himself, he feels he is not yet qualified to call himself old, and still less to speak lightly of retiring. "We're living longer, but life is more tiring!" He asks, only half in jest: How come nowadays middle age seems to drag on forever?

With longer lifespans and less rigid social values, patterns of living once shared by all have been replaced by a growing diversity of individual experiences. In middle age, some people set up successful businesses, while others lose their jobs and are faced with poverty; working women find themselves squeezed between the exhausting demands of children and housework on the one hand and their jobs on the other, while at the same time many single women face a daily battle with loneliness. At the age of 50, some people already have grandchildren at their knee, while others are getting married for the first time. With more and more people remaining single, rising divorce rates, growing numbers of unmarried mothers, increasing occurrence of infertility, and the emergence of large numbers of families where husband and wife live in different cities, or even-as for many expatriate Taiwanese business people-in different countries, many middle-aged people's carefully laid life plans have suddenly come to nothing.

Hospital worker Lin Mei-lun (not her real name), lives in Kaohsiung with her two children. Her ex-husband works in Tainan, and for many years during their marriage he only came home at weekends. Early last year a late-night phone call shattered the peaceful life she had worked so hard to build. At the other end was a woman who venomously demanded that Lin Mei-lun give up her husband, or she would bring along her three-and-a-half-year-old illegitimate son and make a scene at the hospital!

The unbearable anguish of being

"Actually, it's not as if I didn't have my suspicions all those years. But I never thought things would turn out so awful! How could I have been such a fool?" For the next six months, Lin Mei-lun could hardly sleep or eat. By day she dragged herself to work like a zombie, but in the middle of the night she would wake with a start, her heart pounding so hard she couldn't breathe. The affair finally ended in divorce, but the upside is that since then her ex has actually behaved better, for he has begun to commute back to Kaohsiung from Tainan every day, and is much more patient with his son and daughter than before. At present they are planning to remarry, but Lin worries that once her husband is again bound by the chains of marriage, he might return to his old ways.

"Life in middle age is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle in a gale. The more you look at the parts you've already assembled, the more disjointed and ugly they seem; but it's the parts you can't finish that you long for more and more, even though you know there's precious little hope you'll ever get them done." Ms. Lin, who turned 40 this year, says with an air of resignation that if a gust of wind blows the whole puzzle away, the sense of dismay and panic at being tricked by fate can drive you to distraction.

Lin Mei-lun's mother often comes to stay, and this has done much to lighten the burden of running her household. But many people who arrive in middle age without the support of a family can only try to weather life's storms alone.

Ms. Chiang, still single at 46, is an example. When she worked as a PR manager for foreign companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Texas Instruments, she was always the highly effective superwoman. But she realized that under the dual pressure of her need for career success and her unfulfilled emotional needs, she was approaching a state of psychological collapse. Two years ago, she became seriously depressed. At night she would toss and turn in bed, but the worry that lack of sleep would make her unable to get up in the morning and would affect her work performance made her even less able to sleep. Years of looking at a computer screen was causing her vision to deteriorate rapidly, and due to working in a sealed high-tech office she was always dogged by colds, so that every day she felt under the weather.

Live for today

"I asked myself, do you really want to carry on like this? What matters more, your work or your health?" Ms. Chiang had accumulated some savings during her many years at work, but for the first three months after she resigned her job she could not help a sense of panic, feeling anxious that she might be cast out by society, and also fearing the accusing looks of her friends and family. But gradually she began to learn to relax and let go.

"Zhuangzi says that life is toil and that death is the time for rest, but I don't believe all that. It shouldn't be that way!" After three months, Ms. Chiang no longer put herself under pressure, and no longer got worked up about other people's well-meaning advice. Once she stopped having to get up early to go to work, her anxiety about insomnia decreased greatly, and when she was able to adjust her living habits according to her own needs, her depression cleared up by itself. She began decorating her flat, going to the gym, and cooking the food she likes, and even just sitting lost in thought, enjoying the empty spaces in life. In particular, having freed herself from the barren existence of a "sexless wage slave" she has begun to liberate her emotional side and enjoy the pleasure of being a woman.

On the subject of family affection and affairs of the heart, Ms. Chiang has also come to a realization.

"My mother died young, and my father always regarded us three children as bloodsuckers, and never showed us any love." Because of this, Ms. Chiang left home early to live independently. But in her heart, her desire for love has never ceased. Perhaps the shadow of her childhood is behind the setbacks in her love life, so that even today she is still single.

At present, Ms. Chiang has a boyfriend ten years her junior. "We don't constrain each other or force each other into anything. We're only together when we really want to be." The year before last when her father was dangerously ill, he constantly rang his children, begging for their love, which aroused both her sympathy and her disgust. Having seen through the inconstancy of family affection and romantic attachments, she swore never again to put her emotions at the mercy of others. She wants to live truly at ease and without being tied down.

Keeping loneliness at bay

For Ms. Chiang, the single life has its freedoms and its loneliness. But do those who are surrounded by a family have more peace of mind and happiness?

"No, not necessarily," answers 51-year-old Hsiang Chi-tai, a manager at a newspaper, shaking her head. For the last two years Hsiang Chi-tai has been plagued with capsulitis in her shoulder, and one morning when she couldn't manage to fasten her bra before setting off for work, she woke up her son, a university student, to help her. But her son said banteringly: "You old women really are a pain!"

Once, Ms. Hsiang asked her two sons which of them was going to look after her when she was old. But her sons tossed the question back and forth and finally nominated their rather bossy seven-year-old girl cousin!

"I knew they were only joking, but I couldn't help feeling sad, and it made me even more aware that in everything you can only rely on yourself. Anything else is phony!" says Hsiang.

Having a husband and children, her mother and a lot of friends and relations, and with plenty to do, Ms. Hsiang is never alone, yet she cannot help feeling lonely. Sometimes at night she can't sleep and gets up to mop the floor. For a time she even started playing Tetris. "Lying in bed, playing with complete concentration, not thinking about anything else, I got up to scores of tens of thousands of points!" she says, finding this ridiculous even herself.

"Whenever I notice I'm getting down, I start looking for things to do," she says. Middle age is a minefield, and you mustn't fall into the trap of letting yourself get downhearted!

The best laid plans

Apart from those to do with health, marriage and work, many other unexpected changes may occur in middle age. When he was 38, Chao Ning, who is now a director of the Buddhist satellite TV station LTV and the producer of many Buddhist TV programs, was invited to Houston, Texas to give a lecture. On the plane he happened to meet Buddhist Master Hsingyun of Foguangshan Temple. After 14 hours of the master earnestly speaking to him about the principles of Buddhist life, "Even a stone would have been moved!" After Chao's lecture in Houston was over, he immediately took a plane to Los Angeles and went to Hsi Lai Temple, which was just being built. There he sought out Master Hsingyun and declared his conversion to Buddhism, and since then he has never touched a drop of alcohol.

"Before that, I always had a rhyming couplet pasted up by my doorway which read: 'I know there is wine in this world,/ But not that it can make you drunk,' which was my way of bragging about my drinking prowess." What power caused him to make such a great change? Chao Ning himself can't explain.

"In the US, 38 and 49 are special ages. I had come to realize many things, and when fate brought the right opportunity, I was ready for a change of heart," says Chao. He converted to Buddhism at 38, got married at "491?2," and before many years had become the "super-old dad" of three children. The changes in Chao Ning's life in middle age cannot be described as small.

"Looking back, it seems that none of the road I took in life is what I expected." Chao reveals that 40 years ago when he was taking his college entrance exams, he put down all kinds of choices of university but deliberately did not include NTNU, because he thought he was not interested in being a teacher. But although he did not study at NTNU, he went to teach there, and has been there for over 20 years.

"Every year I make a big palaver about wanting to plan my life and how I'm going to give up teaching and concentrate on broadcasting." Chao continues with the same forthright, sincere smile: "But who'd have thought that in the blink of an eye my colleagues would be telling me: 'Old Chao, you needn't bother planning, you're soon going to retire!'" Although he never got around to planning his life, Chao, who has always liked to "follow his feelings," feels that every step he has taken has been steady and enriching. Now that he is about to leave middle age for the age of wisdom, this causes him to walk on eagerly, with a spring in his step. His only real worry is for his three children, now aged seven, five and two years old.

Not daring to get old

"Sometimes when I look at their lovely faces while they sleep, I feel I havn't done right by them, because I'm so much older than they are." The phrase most often on Chao Ning's lips nowadays is, "Because my kids are small, I can't get old just yet." Chao plays basketball three times a week, and is early to bed and early to rise. Having become a father in middle age, he is doing his best to stay young for his children.

Midlife changes may, as for Chao Ning, be one's own choices and bring satisfaction. But there are so many changes which are not chosen and are impossible to prevent, and of these unemployment is one of the most fearsome. The economic malaise which has spread through Taiwan in just the last two years is rapidly overtaking tens of thousands of middle-aged workers.

"A few days ago I heard about the death of a friend of mine. After he was forced to retire from Taiwan Machinery Manufacturing Corporation, he set up a stand selling grilled food at Chichin bathing beach in Kaohsiung. But before long he died of a coronary." Simon Chang, former managing director of the Chunghwa Telecom employees' union, says that on hearing the news, many of the deceased man's good friends could not help thinking: "If we'd known he'd die so young, we shouldn't have stopped him that time when he wanted to go after the boss of TMMC with a Molotov cocktail!"

Chang, who worked at CHT for over 10 years, says that next year the company plans to cut its workforce by a full 3,000 people, which means that within the next year 3,000 people will be "forced to retire." But the average age of CHT's workers is only 46!

Who will tell me?!

Forty-six-what an awkward age. The majority of these workers are carrying the tremendous burden of being the breadwinner for three generations. "The sense of uncertainty about employment has begun to affect every facet of life." Simon Chang says that this is a cause of marital tension, and these workers have thousands of questions sticking in their throats, such as: Will they have to interrupt their children's education? Should they accept a transfer, and move the whole family somewhere else? What kind of second skill should they learn to keep themselves employable? How long a buffer period can the company give them? But nobody is willing to give them a clear answer.

Chang suggests that rather than the government spending vast amounts on unemployment benefits, it would be better for it to set up a life guidance and psychological counseling system for workers at all state-owned and private enterprises, as quickly as possible. "What we want isn't money, but clear guidance to the future!"

"For a middle-aged person, losing one's job is just as traumatic as a car accident, falling ill, the death of a spouse or a child running away from home. It's an event beyond their control which suddenly turns their life upside-down." Chiu Chia-li, director of the Hwo Chyuan Pastoral Counseling Center, describes this kind of occurrence as a "non-normative event." Such events are much more traumatic than "normative events" such as job stress, a parent being paralyzed, children growing up and leaving home, or being passed over for promotion, all of which are more predictable.

Looking around us, there are many middle-aged people who, although one cannot say they are unemployed, don't have a regular career. In his youth, Lin Hung-kui of Chungli in Taoyuan County started up in business from nothing, selling shaved iced snacks. He did well, and used his money to buy three or four shops and apartments. In the end he gave up his shop because the work became physically too demanding, but after several failed attempts in other lines of business, today he can only live on his savings and the rent from his apartments. He has enough to get by, but spending the whole day doing nothing he finds it difficult to face the inquiring glances of neighbors.

Two years ago, encouraged by his wife, who works for an estate agency, Lin went on a pre-work training course at the agency. Being stuck in among a group of young kids in their twenties, and being subjected to "shock style" training-including listening to pep talks, singing military songs and shouting slogans at the tops of their voices-made Lin feel very uncomfortable. Finally, after sticking it out for a month, he quit the job on receiving his first pay packet.

"There are many things which young people can do without any inhibitions, but in middle age you build yourself all kinds of high walls which are very hard to escape from." Lin counts himself lucky, for he doesn't need to break his back just to earn a pittance. But his mood is always uncertain. In the last two years he has begun studying the Book of Changes and fengshui, in the hope that he can take his life to a higher level.

A second spring

"In the US, indecision and depression often drive middle-aged people, especially women, to return to college, to clarify their future path through further study." Hwo Chyuan Pastoral Counseling Center director Chiu Chia-li quotes her own experience. At one time she worked simultaneously as a clothing designer, a part-time community worker and a counselor. Coming from a poor background, she always worked hard to hold down these three jobs. But the more she saw of life, the more dissatisfied she felt with her own situation, and hoped she could make a new breakthrough. Although she had been cautious all her life, at the age of 42 she quit her jobs, and with a sense of release tinged with trepidation, went to study overseas. After leaving Taiwan, Chiu found a school in New York where most of the students were about her age. Like her, many had come there because they had arrived at a point where they did not know what to do with their lives. They had not come to earn a degree, but simply, through the process of study, to "sort out their lives bit by bit." After five years in New York, Chiu felt she had developed a great deal, and had enough strength to help people who needed help. So she returned to Taiwan to become a full-time counselor.

"When I felt that I had reached a crisis, I didn't run away from it, but made the crisis into a challenge and faced it with courage." Looking back on this phase of her life, Chiu cannot suppress a smile. "I wouldn't call it success, and it doesn't mean I don't have any struggles left in my life. But I know I've had at least one experience of winning a battle with myself, so I can walk my future path more firmly."

Everyone's story of middle age is different; the joys and sorrows of middle age mean different things to different people. What are your middle years like?