Midlife crisis Suddenly the time comes when you understand: what you have been doing until now is no longer satisfying, and in general has almost no meaning. I want something new, authentic, my own. Or maybe a well-forgotten old one. To realize the main youth dream, for example. “Having completed half my earthly life, I found myself in a dark forest,” Dante began his “Divine Comedy” with these lines. A variety of people start their comedy with them. It happens differently for everyone. My classmate left his family and married a young woman. A classmate quit his business and returned to his original profession - sailing around the world as a navigator. A childhood friend gave birth to a second child when her eldest daughter was already 15. And a childhood friend, a long-married man, gets acquainted with girls on Internet forms, and then goes on dates and compares them in real life. One friend has gone into esotericism and is opening her chakras in exotic ways. Another became interested in photography and even makes good money by selling her photographs. In general, everyone gets screwed in their own way, but almost everyone gets screwed. And this is exactly what is called a midlife crisis. A time when suddenly, as in adolescence, questions such as the meaning of life, the structure of the world and other complexities that the Russian classics of the 19th century loved to write about, but are not at all customary to talk about in the modern world, become relevant. And it's worth talking. The American psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, who was the first to describe the age-related characteristics of adults, generally believed that if a person from 35 to 55 has not understood the meaning for himself and has not felt a sense of belonging to humanity, he will withdraw into himself and be preoccupied only with vain everyday trifles. For example, where to buy a loaf of bread not for 15 rubles, but for 12-60. A midlife crisis is when you are no longer the same person you were, but have not yet found out what you will become. Quite a painful period, “neither this nor that.” Everything is shaky and unclear. And a common mood is melancholy. (Many people think that this is depression and start taking Prozac. This way they drown out the melancholy, but never gain new meaning.) Recessions can be interspersed with periods of recovery, adventure and experimentation. In general, the pitching can be such that it doesn’t seem too much. The famous American and Swiss psychoanalyst Murray Stein compares this state to a pupa turning from a larva into a butterfly. "Does the caterpillar know that it will turn into a butterfly after it is cocooned, chrysalised, and dissolved? On the part of the insect, this is an act of faith. "Instinct" is our faded name for a remarkable display of spontaneous courage, since the larva must not resist the process, which so persistently draws her in, but she must assist him, invest all her energy and skill into him.” Many people think that they cannot afford such a luxury as a crisis in middle age. This is not accepted here. What can I say, even if developmental psychology in Soviet times ended with the teenage period - as if nothing further happened to the person, there was no longer any development. Then he had to work, work and give birth to a couple of children. What kind of butterfly dolls are there? Nevertheless, experts advise taking the example of the pupa and waiting it out, living through this experience of the transition period to the end. Do not try to break the cocoon prematurely, but do not resist, do not try to slow down development. Otherwise, the butterfly may never hatch. But if you don’t run and hide, then the moment will come when you finally flap your wings. The pupal period, writes Stein, can last for years. For the great German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, for example, this stage of standing on the threshold lasted a whole decade. But hatching occurs quite quickly: the butterfly tears the cocoon and spreads its wings.