mogley

Ok this is completely off-topic but i don't really know where else to put it. I don't think anyone will see this topic if I post it in the Lounge and i really want to know people's view on this. Either way, mods can move this if they wish.

Before you read this post, read this blog article on the smh about mid life crisis.
http://blogs.smh.com.au/allmenarelia...questio_3.html

Read it?
Have you reflected on it and considered your own personal situation?

I know I did and I became scared to death.
I'm asking this in this forum because I know this place is a fairly mature place.
I myself just turned 21 and with no disrespect intended, am one of the younger people in this forum.
I am one of those starry eyed youths who has 'their future ahead of them', with all the mystery and excitement of 'what could be', who can always fall back on blaming it on their youth.

But what happens when suddenly you hit 33 and realise all you set out to achieve never came about, or was never really as great as you thought it would be.

How do you measure success?
What would you have done when you were younger that you regret?

Already I envy the youth. I see high school students making a complete fool of themselves, crying, laughing and making mistakes. We all berate them for their lack of responsibility and disrespect. But in a strange way, I think it's because we are envious of their care free ways, their energy and that although one day they will grow old, their best years are still ahead of them.

I know this may be a little too deep but a car forum but hey, its the internet, could be far worse.. Sometimes I think i'm an old man trapped in a young body.

It's all so depressing. Albeit i'm sure many of you don't agree with me. I'm being very pessimistic but i'm also sure many of you can relate to what i'm saying.
12 years ago I was 9 and 21 seemed so far away, yet 12 years later here I am and 33 for some reason seems frighteningly closer.

Everybody will feel unfulfilled. There is no doubt. I can guarantee if you are rich and your next car makes the rx8 look like pocketchange, you will have made sacrifices that you long for. Maybe you are not married. Maybe you don't have kids.
I'm sure Brad Pitt has got a world of problems of his own. Likewise you may have all you could ask for in a family, friends, and done everything you wanted to do in your youth but you may have sacrificed long hours at work and a healthy income.

I guess this is fairly personal and I wouldn't be surprised if nobody replies, but i'm willing to lay it out there and hopefully inspire myself or others to get off their ***** and make the life they want for themselves before its too late.

Now with that off my chest, I think it's time i tie the dirty laces on my Converse sneakers, turn my windows down, system up and hit the town and revel in some good ole fashioned irresponsibility.

Grizzly8

My recipe for living life is simple , i try and have fun everyday wether it be working or otherwise , i tend not to be too serious .

My measure of success is measured by having great kids and home life ETC , my most valuable asset is not my properties or cars , material things but my ....TIME as thats all we really have , how you choose to spend it will reflect on the type of person you become .

Be who you are and say what you feel , because those who mind dont matter and those who matter dont mind .

B....free
Michael

Gomez

I didn't read the article.

You think too much.

I'm past midlife. I'm 42 (as you know), about 2/3rd's gone.

I deal with it by taking the **** out of young people..... . They need to be taken down a peg or two. They're cocky think-they-know-it-alls.....in the main.

Cheers.

Gibbo

Wow...you are right Mogly...this is deep. It is the type of conversation that breaks out with close mates after 24 beers and a sing along to Khe San.

Well, where to start.

I had my goals set out for me at a young age, I wanted to be rich, a millionaire by 21, I did not want kids or marriage till I was at least 30.
Esentially my goal was to be the most successful person I know, by setting that goal you are always on the improve, because as you get more successful, you meet more successful people and as such you goal is self perpetuating. A journey as such.

I turned 30 last year, for me it was the loss of my twenties, I was faced with the fact I was hitting the fringe of middle age. I actually went through a type of depression, I kept telling myself that I know had to grow up and I could not longer say I was in my twenties. Very much a pshycological land mark more than anything real or physical.

More so for me my 30th was a time to look back at what I hoped I would be and what I really am.
As previously mentioned I said I would not be married or have kids till after I was 30. Funny thing is that sometimes life has it's own plans, I met and fell in love with the girl of my dreams at 21, we married when I was 22. By the time I was 25 we had our first child on the way, 14 months after the first we had a second. So there I was at 27 with 2 kids, a wife and a mortgage.

At the time my first child was due I was presented with a once in a life time opportunity (or so I thought) to take over the business that I had worked for for the past 5 years. The time was wrong, my life was about to get hectic but I said what the hell and did it anyway.
I was always told bite off more than you can chew and then chew like hell. It sounds great in a movie, but in real life it is no where near as fun.

Well the long and the short of my story is this, here I stand at 30 (nearly 31) I have a beautiful wife, two kids (Girl and Boy), I run my own business that is successful and I have no regrets in my life at all. I consider myself one of the lucky few.
I have always had the "what if" thoughts. What if I was not married and did not have kids, would I be driving that 911 Turbo and travelling the world, the answer is yes I may have that but I don't think I would be as content as I am now. I have a great family and great friends to share my life and success with, and if truth be known I could buy that car and do that travel, however I feel as a responsible adult that I now have the duty to evaluate my choices as they no longer just effect me.

My advice to someone at the edge of that cliff wanting to know whether to jump into Adulthood and become "responsible", the fact that you are thinking about your life choices in such a way means that you are no longer at that edge, you have already jumped. You are considering what it will take to be content in life, you are no longer living for now, you are living for tomorrow, I feel as you get older and you get a family and more obligations you will tend to live for tomorrow more than today, then you go back through the living for today instead of tomorrow as you get older (or so I am hoping).

To achieve happiness and contentment, ask yourself what you want? At this point many people say now work out how to get it, my advice is different. My life panned out this way because I knew what I wanted but I wasn't sure exactly how I would get there, so whenever an opportunity surfaced I tried it with all my effort. This effort never went to waste even if the end result never got me to my final destination. Experience is always gained from a good or bad experience...learn from it.

I will pass on one very wise bit of advice that came from one of my high school business studies teachers......
There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance, once you learn that line the world is at your feet.

For me they have been words to live by and to date I am quite happy with the work in progress. I have not achieved all of my life goals, however I am on track because I have realised that whilst money is very important, I have discovered that there are other more valuable goals that you should never neglect on your journey. Those valuable goals are not the same for everyone, for some it is family, for some it is happiness...what ever yours are, never be affraid to change your life plans to ensure that you have them.

Cheers

Gomez

A refreshing change. Good to see the ****-poor effort at pretending you're someone else go out the door. Give us a little credit for brains in future.

Grizzly8

The price for speaking ones mind is bannishment on this forum , so much for free speech

If i could re-instate Lock & Load i wouldnt have to appear by stealth

mysql101

I went through the same thing when I was around 21. After about 5 years, I came to slowly accept that there is no way out, and that no matter how famous or how much money you have, death will come to us all. It seems crazy if you REALLY think about it.

Revolver

Holy crap - I thought I'd wandered into Dr Phil's self-help forum for a minute there.

Yeah, I went through some of this crap in my early thirties (now 36). Men are competitive creatures and always want what some other bloke has got, be it his car, boat, house, lifestyle or even girl. However, I've learnt over the years that none of that stuff matters too much. If you measure your success by money or fame you'll always feel hungry and unsatisfied - I know enough rich and famous people to have learnt that lesson.

Relax, this feeling passes. An honest assessment of what you've achieved (as opposed to what others have achieved) is usually pretty satisfying unless you're a complete dropkick.

Give the best of yourself in every relationship, however distant, and be enthusiastic about everything you decide to do. That's pretty much how I live and it works for me.

And if all else fails, buy an RX8 and rev the crap out of it at every opportunity.

dillsrotary

part of the age (i'm 25), its a rough point, i called it my quarter life crisis. all in all i questioned whether i would honestly want to be someone else besides myself. not just that guys money, that guys car or home, but completely switch places with someone, their body, their mind and personality. in the end no way, i'll stick with myself and see how this life turns out.

mysql101

How about this question:

When you're at the end of your life, would you want to be awake and feel yourself dying, or would you want to be asleep and miss it?

My gf says she'd want to be awake and see what it's like to die.

I think it's a morbid thing to say... but on the other hand, you're about to die. It's not like the pain will traumatize you, or that you'll remember it later on.

Gibbo

Wow this is deep too, however there is the other side to this, what is the point of experiencing death/dying if you have no memory of it, you can not share the experience or what you learnt from it. I would rather die peacefully for the fact that my last moments might as well be pleasant if there is no gain from the pain.

mysql101

If you're not going to be around afterwards, does it *really* matter?

Gibbo

The end result is death anyway, whilst you are alive and experiencing it I guess it does matter. Because you still experience the pain and the precursor to dying. It depends how the moments leading to death are.
Death is the ultimate destination for us all, a morbid ending enduring pain and suffering would not be preferred because whilst alive we still feel, also those who witness our deaths may be affected by the ordeal if particularly traumatic.

dillsrotary

good point, i think i would want to experience it, seems like a proper way to end instead of sleeping into it.

FishoftheWeek

Favourite lines of any song ever:

"...one day you'll find
ten years have got behind you
no one told you when to run
you've missed the starting gun
so you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
and racing around to come up behind you again
the sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
shorter of breath and one day closer to death"

Yeah the same theme's been done a thousand times over by a thousand different bands, authors, you-name-it. Basically live for the present but not at the expense of the future and vise versa. If you give one preference over the other you're alway going to have regrets; best you can do islearn from them and move on.

Gibbo

One line from a song that I really like is from the Goo Goo Dolls - Iris:
"Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive", I guess this is true, one last feeling of life before dying....could almost be poetic.

Gomez

Spare us the "I just found this forum and I'm looking at buying an RX-8" crap. It's this sort of identity fraud that led your Gold Coast mate to his banning.

It wastes our time. We respond to bogus questions, answer bogus enquiries etc. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand why people get pissed off.

Right....back to regular programming.

Revolver

Well, we are all getting very deep and philosophical today.

Gomez's maintenance of the rage is quite a breath of fresh air.

As for going from the mid-life crisis thing to questions of death - damn, that was a quick second half wasn't it?

If you wander through a biographical encyclopaedia it won't take you long to realise that some of man's greatest achievements were accomplished by people over the age of 40 (and indeed 50).

I know we live in the "I want it yesterday" age but like good red wine, some things are worth the wait.

I think a major part of the current agony is the multitude of choice we face from the smallest to the biggest things in our life. Most people aren't very good decision makers and even when they do manage to make one they often look over their shoulder and wonder whether they chose correctly. Hindsight's a valuable thing but it's a mistake to keep repeating the saddest words in the English language: "If only..."

Sheesh, think I'm all psycho-babbled out.

Gomez

I maintain the rage on your behalf, Rev. You were one of guys who welcomed Grizzly8 to the forum....

https://www.rx8club.com/showpost.php...55&postcount=3

Cheers....

jormatom

I totally agree.

I am 42 now, but in my early 30s I thought I was indestructable. High paying job, travel, cars, plenty of money, investments, debt, parties, fun, fun and more fun.

Then my little boy died.

I never thought i would ever experience pain like that and unless something like that happens to my other 2 boys, I probably never will.

6 months of soul searching made me realise that despite what we accumulate and collect during our life, all we have is time.

We all strive to have more than we need because we want, not because we need. I am lucky enough to have a little more than I need, so I don't have to work extremely long hours. This gives me the opportunity to spend as much time as possible with my family.

How do I measure my success? By spending quality time with my kids so that when they grow up, they remember the things we did together.

Whatever your goals are, whether it be conquering the world or flying to the moon, don't forget to stop along the way and smell the roses.

Cheers

Greg

**** this topic is heavy.

xxup

Greg I really hate to follow your moving post with this but.....

Damn... Missed out on Mid-life crisis too... Can you have a post-mid-life crisis about missing your mid-life crisis??

The Finance Director didn't - that's how we ended up with the RX-8..

As Gomez can vouch - I never grew up and I have definately taken Greg's advice to smell the roses! Look after those fine young lads Greg!

Grizzly8

Greg

The day after Kerry Packer died i was at my gym working out , i was asked by a channel nine interviewer as to what made me excersise so hard a day after Christmas , and how i felt after my workout .

To that i replied i felt great and a lot fitter / richer than Kerry Packer , even with all his billions he couldn't buy more quality Time .

I was fortunate enough to get out of the rat race early enough and realise that your space and time ,peace of mind are far greater than wealth .

I have never heard of a person who was terminally ill or was dying complaining of not working hard enough , most would have lived differently if they hadknown of their inpending fate .

People tend to take their own inportance way to seriously with out realising that whatever happens to them life still goes on .

Sorry to hear of your loss.

Most of the time i think of having Enough in my life .

Enough , happiness , health , wealth , food , sadness , shelter etc etc ,if you manage to have enough of all that life can throw at you and you can still stay positive you are a lucky person .

Being greedy in life definetely makes us unhappy and unwell .





Phylosophy lesson over

timbo

What is going on here??

FFS, this place is about cars and crap...not some new age philosophy discussion.

The only advice I can offer is to get on with living life, not thinking about it...because something always happens to change your plans anyway. Enjoy the moment, you're a long time dead.

And if that doesn't work, buy a turbocharger

xxup

Or a VW Polo...

Revolver

Yeah - I forgot about that.

Indeed, having gone back to the thread in question (https://www.rx8club.com/showthread.p...24#post1419224), I'm a bit pissed off that we were all so polite answering non-questions.

Look Michael, you want back in - I don't really give a ****. But spare us the petty games and play acting. It's not cool.