The article was really about Nora Ephron, who ‘mothered’ several adult women, including the author, who on the face of it had a hard middle age – an unbelievably selfish husband whom she clearly should have divorced years before, and a debilitating condition which was solvable via a hysterectomy which she also refused to have for years.
Ephron, to the author, seemed to represent her antithesis; someone who was decisive about both large and small things.
The real “rule” of the story seems to be: take a risk to get out of emotional and physical suffering if you can do so; not making a decision is, in fact, making a decision.
Not to go all categorical imperative, but imagine if everyone followed this rule and the dystopian nightmare that would follow. All friendships based solely on “What have you done for me lately?” Turning to a friend for help and getting ghosted precisely because you are asking them for help and that doesn’t “serve them” at this moment. Sweating every interaction and how it affects the balance of who’s serving who just in case it tips against you. Knowing they’re doing the same. The manouvering, the power plays.
Yes, there are toxic people in the world who demonstrate over time that they’re not worth keeping in your life. But go from that to “cut out people who no longer serve you” is borderline psychopathic. How about, “Get some good friends and work on keeping them”.
I assume the author meant leaving jobs or relationships that were toxic. Not treating every relationship as completely transactional.
All the advice here is great and all, but the problem with “middle age” as I see it is that your current situation is typically the result of what you’ve been doing for the past several decades. The window for making radical changes is rapidly closing, but you are young enough that you still have many decades more to suffer through your choices!
You can’t just redo a 30 year career or 20-30 year relationships. The flip side being, is this a career you actually want to spend another 20-30 years in? Or do you want to continue to maintain these relationships?
I am really not the type of person who laughs at the calamitous idea of gathering friends and feeding those who no longer serve them to the wildebeests - even as fantasy, but I do credit the efficiency.
Good one, that. I’ve had to fight that urge, or that pressure, from my 20s on:
“You still like that?”
“You still listen to that?”
…and so on. I mean, our tastes may evolve, but it shouldn’t be like a flick of the switch. Static or peer pressure from people who evidently believe the mind has a fixed capacity like a hard drive, and so with each new thing added as we age, a corresponding thing of yore must be discarded.
Yeah, Olderism perplexes me. The kids are alright. They like things the older people hate. That’s good. They should. They have to have their own childhood, their own teen years, their own young lives, not relive ours. I certainly don’t want my kids to live my life. (Not that it was bad; they just need their own.) And it should be different. I don’t really get Tik Tok; I don’t get the videos my 7 and 5 year old watch. I don’t get the appeal of watching Minecraft or Roblox being played while two guys narrate in a shouting manner. But I don’t care. That’s their space.
I deal with this with my wife, who’s two years older than me, but seemed to have decided, sometime in her early 50s, that she was now an “old person.” She particularly complains about modern music – whenever there’s a TV commercial featuring a new song, she grabs for the TV remote, chanting “shut up shut up shut up!!” while she mutes it, then remarks to me, “how can anyone think that that’s music?”
It’s not like I particularly like a lot of that music, either, but I’m able to tune it out. She simply can’t.
Embrace what you like. I like cheesy TV shows (looking at you, Zoo), golden oldies and polka dots. Also.Scandinavian gnomes. I watch cheesy TV shows, listen to the oldies station, have a polka dotted umbrella and my shower curtain has gnomes on it. Deal.
