Try More Things: Unexpected And Weird Advice

Try one position. Toss it. Repeat. Find a fit. Don’t anchor to the first, or the easiest, or the most accessible. Today’s world provides many opportunities. One of the irrefutably largest ones is trying multiple paths before settling. This way, a match between person and career can be established. You experience first-hand what it’s like to work in a chosen field and can leave if it’s not a good fit. The result is living to work, not working to live. Long-term happiness. Fulfillment and satisfaction. The best advice for uncertain youngsters is to have a go at a bunch of paths.

Midlife Crisis Dawns Upon You

Wait wait. Doesn’t this have a cost? Absolutely. Don’t you forego the opportunity to jumpstart your career by switching around? Do the math. Invest a few years now. Hold a job or business you are happy with for years to come. Or, skip the “experimentation phase”. End up stuck in work you hate. For years. Decades. Life. Many haven’t underwent a change since, like, high school. Glued to a career they don’t particularly enjoy. That is the price you pay by not doing “research”—by not tasting different paths.

Hence many find themselves bamboozled. Somewhere in the middle. A transition of identity and confidence around 40-65 years of age. We call it a midlife crisis. People mature. Enough to realize that time is indeed finite. Spending a lifetime doing shit you hate for mediocre results isn’t for them. Not anymore. Life gets messy. Intense sadness, remorse, regret, self-doubt… A yearning to be young, wild, and free again… Cravings—deep, soul-eating cravings—to change past decisions and events…

Hits You Like A Wave

The age is perfect. Just long enough to evaluate your past and present life. Any younger, and there’s no past to chew on. Older, and you’re unlikely to change due to the frailty attributable to age. Day-to-day stressors accumulate. A flawless mixture of “I am in control. I get to change. I will now live according to me, my needs, and my wants.” and “I was young and swayed by circumstances. I have to make a shift now, or else my older self will have the same regrets.” Toss in a traumatic event. Adds some spice. Someone in the family dies. A career setback. A life-threatening, life-changing injury. Divorce.

Amidst the turmoil people undergo something of a growth spurt. They did it as kids and teenagers, transforming in height and width and breadth. Now the fountain of youth engulfs them again, and the adult emerges with development and change. Akin to teenagers, they boil with reflection, reassessment, and regret. They feel all grown up and mature. Something acts as the tipping point. A shift of gears happens. Action is taken. Old goals are embarked upon. Education is reentered. New spousal relationships are formed. Big purchases—and sales—are made. The ambition to right the missteps of youth lights the path and motivates.

Midlife Is Sad, Crises Are Good

It’s just, all of that stress, anxiety, and depression—and worse repercussions—could be saved on with a more exploratory set of early years. And the consequences are terrible. That is perhaps the worst part. Midlife crises are abundant. A 2022 paper using data from 500,000 individuals describes midlife in a depressing way. Here: “midlife is a time when people disproportionately take their own lives, have trouble sleeping, are clinically depressed, spend time thinking about suicide, feel life is not worth living, find it hard to concentrate, forget things, feel overwhelmed in their workplace, suffer from disabling headaches, and become dependent on alcohol.” These takeaways pervade nations, genders, work productivity, and whether the adult has children.

Midlife crises aren’t necessarily bad. Those undergoing them often experience it as a positive period of growth and progress towards goals. They finally explore what they failed to in their earlier years, maturing in the process. Ironically, the “worst part”—the crisis itself—is a positive consequence of the negative events leading up to it. The experience can be highly beneficial and rewarding. Spring, all over again. The contrast between confusion, boredom, resentment, anger, and discontent, to clarity, exploration, reassessment, and acceptance makes it a period of self-realization. Talk about positive change.

The Lost Dutch Boy

What if you want to, y’know, avoid all of that midlife mayhem? Experiment. Live your years more like this boy born in the 19th century. He was the eldest of six children, born and reared in a small village in the southern Netherlands. His hobby? Walking. Wandering the countryside. Observing nature. The boy didn’t speak to others much, wasn’t awesome at school—or awesome anywhere for a while. At 16, his uncle got him a spot as an apprentice in Goupil.

He spent two years working for Goupil in London, and one in Paris. The daily contact with pieces from the masters had his exploratory soul wild. Yet, despite his taste for Dutch and French painters, he hated his job. Art dealing wasn’t his thing. So he tried something new. The boy taught languages for a while. Nope. He preached in England. Didn’t fit the bill. Worked for a bookseller in his homeland. Wasn’t it. Held a longing to serve humanity and thought God might help him. Took up theology. Abandoned that for short-term evangelist training. Got zero appointments for three months, gave up, and traveled to an impoverished mining region in Belgium. Living among the poor moved the boy, and he gave away all of his belongings. The church responded by throwing him out for being too religious.

He Picked Up A Pencil

Penniless and godless, the boy—now a man—sank into despair. He withdrew from society. He told a friend they thought of him as a “madman” because he wanted to be a “true Christian”. Instead, they threw him out “like a dog” saying he was “causing a scandal”. Amidst this spiritual breakdown, the man started drawing. Drawing seriously. He changed his mission. Again. Four years ago he dealt pieces of art somewhere in France. Now he decided to bring consolation to humankind by making art himself. The man would only live to see ten more years, but boy would he create.

The short-lived career started with an initial four years of acquiring technical proficiency. He focused mainly on drawing and watercolor. Studied at the Brussels Academy for a couple of months, after which he moved to his father’s in the Netherlands, beginning to work from nature. He worked hard, on schedule. But he realized he kind of sucked and that learning everything by himself is impossible. The man then searched for guidance from seasoned artists, visited museums, and met with painters.

Influential Fellows

Eventually, his technical knowledge was sufficient and he began experimenting. That summer would prove transformative. His strong desire to be “alone with nature” got him to an isolated part of the Netherlands. Being a bit of a mover, he lasted only three months there before going home where his art got a much-needed two-year growth spurt. But something was off. Something was limiting, isolating him.

At that point, the study of various paintings had given him an understanding of color, of visual impression, of the power of painting. He suddenly departed for Belgium, where he could meditate on a greater number of works. Here he learned to notate mood via color from Peter Ruben’s works. In Belgium is where he discovered Japanese prints and Impressionism. The man met lots of painters who would shape modern art as we know it. And, just a few years before his death, would combine this knowledge to form his unique style.

The Ear Attack

His palette grew colorful and wild. His vision peculiar, unseen. He would throw gollops of pure paint on the canvas and use broken brushwork. Soon his style had crystallized, but he was tired of the city. The nightlife wasn’t for our reserved boy. He wanted to “look at nature under a brighter sky.” Paris wasn’t ticking the boxes, and he moved to a more tranquil region of France.

Within the following year, the man would dirty a lot of canvases. From depictions of trees and views of the town, to self-portraits and landscapes. His strong emotions expressed themselves with vivid color. Once a hesitant apprentice, now squeezing tubes of oil paint on his canvas. He worked fast, determined to embrace the effect that possessed him. That same year on Christmas Eve, something truly possessed him. The man, physically and mentally exhausted, snapped at a fellow artist. Of all the things he could have done, he sliced off part of his partner’s ear, gave it to a girl named Rachel, and told her to “guard this object carefully”.

And Then It Ends

A few weeks later, another mental breakdown happened. By then, he was scared his instability would keep him from art and he asked to be locked up in an asylum to be under medical supervision. Here he spent his last year, fighting demons of the mind, darting between moods. The man would turn tubes to masterpieces we know and love. Blue and black. Scrunch. That’s the night. Yellow. Twist it. That’s the star. The Starry Night was born.

Vincent van Gogh feared losing touch with reality and ended it. He felt homesick and lonely. Painting fields of corn, the river valley, the church, and the town hall back in his home didn’t help. In despair of ever being cured, van Gogh shot himself. Only to wake up. Wounded. In a bed. He missed. Two days later, the legendary painter would die. He wasn’t just good. Van Gogh partly defined art. Despite having sold just one of his works in his lifetime, his name virtually unknown when he killed himself.

The More You Lose, The More You Win

The lesson? Try things. Have a go. Van Gogh was the genius we love in large part because of his early voyages. Back and forth. Poverty, self-mutilation, mental breakdowns, constant switches and encounters with failure. The same man now decorates everything from the phone cases of teenagers who’ve never been to an art exhibit, to the mugs of inspired writers and directors. Maybe he had epilepsy, maybe he was a schizophrenic, maybe both, but you cannot disagree with his transcendent success. What if he wasn’t dismissed by the church for being too authentic of a follower? Only by experimentation, failure, and frequent change had van Gogh discovered himself.

Final Comment

In the end, spending time to experiment, especially in the early years of one’s life, is a great way to stymie the midlife crisis and broaden your knowledge for years to come. Find a path fit for you, not a path you have to fit. Wish you luck! “In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure,” says Seth Godin, “In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.” Don’t be invisible.