Mid Life Crisis Postponed

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There's  a Hebrew well-wish-saying "עד מאה ועשרים", "ahd meah v'esrim", which means "(may you live) to a hundred and twenty".   I don't know if anyone that says that really believes it will happen, but I have good reason to believe I'll live to a hundred and forty.  

When I turned forty one, I was a prime candidate for a mid-life crisis.  The sad cliché of having an affair with a woman from the office was off the table and the pathetic sports car purchase didn't seem to fit my four-wheel-drive persona, but Linda and I were sitting at the breakfast table and I opened the newspaper to see a full page ad for the newly released BMW Z3 and said "that is the most beautiful car!".  Linda said "go get it".   No sane man would have an affair on a woman that stellar and suddenly the guy in his forties who buys his first sports car seemed less pathetic and more go-get-ic.    Lots of folks told me that the car was a mid-life-crisis acquisition but I'd had that sports car "crisis" since I was eleven.    


I did enjoy that car, but it postponed my mid-life crisis.   It just never seemed to be worth having a proper existential meltdown.  Don't get me wrong, I've had plenty of crises, just not of the "mid-life" variety.    But this year, with so many rearrangements, new arrangements, and just plain old DE-rangement I figured now would be a good time for that long postponed midlife crisis.   I did my best, asked all the big questions, re-lived the losses, stared down the finality of a "zero-eth" birthday, and by golly, sans new sports car or new ladies, I concluded "if this is what seventy looks like, I'm fine".   God has given me too many good gifts and the joy of new discoveries, that I'm content.  So by my calculation, postponing my mid-life crises till now assures I'll live to be a hundred and forty.  

From a stack of papers I (finally) rearranged off my desk, this photo just emerged, as if to punctuate this promise of long life and fulfilled days.  As in the tale of Job, filled as it was with "crises", he lived another 140 years after his troubles "full of days".  So why not?   Fill 'em up! 

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