I’ve been wondering: should I get a tattoo? At this moment, it seems
like a pretty important question to me. I’m pretty sure it’s a question
for others too. I’m a church pastor, and I’ve just entered my fortieth
year of life. And my question is specifically for those who are also
pastors (or ministry leaders) and who are at a similar stage: is it time
for you to go and get a tat?
Lately I’ve been reflecting on the phenomenon known as the “mid-life
crisis”. That may sound strange or melancholic, but I suspect it’s just
something thinking men of my age are likely to reflect on.
Mid-life crises are not exclusive to men, of course, but they do seem to
manifest themselves in men in a particular way. At this point in my
life I’m wondering whether it will happen to me, I’m curious about how
it might affect my friends, and I’m conscious that the “mid-life crisis”
seems most destructive and sinister when it comes upon someone who’s
unprepared. That’s why I’m thinking about it, and that’s why I’m writing
about it.
A “mid-life crisis” comes, of course, when a man begins to feel a
measure of dissatisfaction with his existence. He begins to reflect on
where he is in relation to where he thought he’d be at this stage. He
begins to think more seriously about his own mortality as he realizes
that half of life (or more than half) has most likely already gone, and
he wonders what he will leave behind when he goes: what his “legacy”
will be, what “mark” he will have left on the world. In particular, it
seems to me, the man who begins to experience some mid-life angst is the
man who begins to face up to the fact that he had great expectations
for himself as a younger man, great hopes and ambitions, but very few
(if any) of them have been realized in the way he expected. Continue at Simon Flinders
