The second look
By forty you ask: can I? After forty you ask: was this mine? The second question has no answer in the plan. It has one only in the truth.
20. “Was this mine?”
How it begins
It does not begin with a crisis. It usually begins with an event that is not big. Someone dies. Someone falls ill. One of the children leaves. Or a man does everything the same as yesterday, and suddenly everything looks foreign to him.
And a question appears that nobody has voiced: “Was this mine?”
Not “did I succeed” — that is a question of the thirties. This one belongs to the forties, and it is harder, because it does not look for a measure. It looks for authorship.
What is really being asked
There are three questions inside it, and they have to be separated:
1. “Did I choose this?” — a question about decisions.
2. “Was I there when it mattered?” — a question about presence.
3. “Was I the one I am, or the one I should have been?” — a question about identity.
The third is the real question. The first two are guilt, and you get nowhere from guilt.
Why it comes now
Because for the first time in life, time has become two-directional. Until forty, time was a line ahead. There was always an “after”: after the loan, after the child, after the winter, after retirement.
After forty, for the first time, a man sees a line behind him — and sees that some of what was ahead has already gone by, unused.
That is not depression. It is accuracy — and that is why it hurts.
Two wrong roads
When that question appears, people usually go one of two ways. Both are delusions.
The first: destroy and start again. Resignation, moving, divorce. Sometimes that is right. But most often, after two years, a man has the same life in another city — because the problem was not outside, it was in how he chose. And that has not changed.
The second: suppress and be grateful. “I have everything, how can I complain.” A man smothers the question, and it returns as irritability, insomnia, or a quiet disgust with his own life.
The third way, the one that works, is more tedious and harder: review. Not demolition — sorting.
Sorting
Practically: a man takes his life and divides it into three piles. On paper, not in his head.
| Pile | What goes there | What is done with it |
|---|---|---|
| Mine | I chose it, and I would choose it again | kept — that is the foundation |
| Inherited | I did not choose it, but I carried on because I did not know I could do otherwise | negotiated |
| Someone else's | I did not choose it, and I don't want it — but I carry it out of habit or fear | let go |
Life is rarely whole in one pile. It is mostly in the inherited — and that is also the greatest opportunity, because the inherited can be negotiated.
And one thing that cannot be undone
A man in his forties often says: “I lost twenty years.”
That is not true, and it is not useful. What is true: twenty years were for something. Only that something was not what you thought. Children grew up. The House was built. Someone was cared for. Someone was loved. A man learned a craft, and he learned what he does not want — and that is knowledge too.
What is lost is not time. Authorship is lost. It does not come back — it is taken from now on.
21. The body speaks
The bill arrives
This is the stage where the body first sends the bill for the last twenty years. Not dramatically. No big diagnoses. First the small things:
- sleep is bad, and it happens when a man is tired,
- the back is stiff in the morning,
- blood pressure is “slightly raised” and “should be watched”,
- food that was eaten all his life suddenly bothers him,
- and most of all: energy runs out after a while — not after work.
That last one is the most accurate sign that something is not right. Because up to forty, tiredness was repaired by sleep. After forty, sleep repairs the body, but not what a man is carrying.
What the body carries
In NLP terms: mind and body are one system (assumption 2, appendix 1). That is not a saying here — it is diagnostics.
| The body | What often stands behind it |
|---|---|
| the back, the neck, the shoulders | a weight that cannot be put down, or constant readiness |
| the stomach, digestion | something that cannot be “digested” — a decision, a word, a loss |
| the head | the pressure of thoughts that spin with no exit |
| sleep | waking because of a question that is not asked during the day |
| breathing, blood pressure | fear that has become constant and no longer feels like fear |
This is not a diagnosis. It is a map — and it is valid only after a doctor has ruled out illness. The reverse is not done: health is not concluded from emotions. But when the body is healthy and the discomfort stays, the map helps.
The biggest mistake of men at this stage
A man in Serbia goes to the doctor when he cannot get up. Not when he cannot sleep. Not when he is irritable. Not when he has lost the will for what he loved.
That is why depression in the forties is often recognised only when something breaks — and then the body is treated and the cause remains.
The sign to watch: a person stops doing things he loved, and does not notice that he stopped. That is not “settling down”. That is the first sign.
What the body asks for (and it is not rest)
The workbooks call it “mind movement”. In practice, for a man of forty-five, it comes down to three things.
1. Movement. Not exercise — movement. Walking without a purpose, thirty minutes. Not because it is healthy, but because thoughts arrange themselves differently in walking than in a chair.
2. Breath. Not meditation. One thing: exhale longer than you inhale, three times, when tension appears. That is the only door into a system that responds immediately.
3. Silence without screens. Ten minutes a day, without a phone. Not because it is spiritual — but because a man of forty-five has no moment in the day that is not exposed to someone else's demand.
All three are small. That is why they work: the big ones do not get done.
22. First losses
What changes when someone close dies
Until forty, death was a concept. After forty it becomes an experience. And that changes more than sadness. It changes the structure of time.
A person knows, for the first time, that the line behind him is longer than he thought, and that what is ahead is unknown but limited.
That is why people in their forties often start counting. Who died, in what year, how old they were. That is not morbid. That is the first time a person has a calendar, not just a plan.
Sadness that has no place
In this country little is said about sadness. A man does not cry. A woman “endures”. And then sadness comes out in the only way that is allowed: through work.
A man goes back to work three days after his father's death, and works harder than before. That is called “holding on”. But what is not cried out stays in the body — and after five years it comes out as irritability, or illness, or silence in the house.
This is not an invitation to cry. It is an invitation to know: sadness that has no place will find one itself, and usually a worse one.
Three things that help (and none of them is “time heals”)
1. The name. Say the name of the dead person, aloud, in conversation. Not “my father” — the name. People here often cannot do that for years, and then they feel as if they have forgotten.
2. A ritual. Not a big one. Some place, some date, something done every year. A ritual does not keep the pain — it keeps the connection.
3. A conversation with someone who has been through it. Not with a therapist — with someone who lost the same thing. That is the only kind of conversation that helps in the first year, because you do not have to explain.
And losses that are not death
In your forties you lose the second thing, and people are silent about it:
- you lose the health you took for granted,
- you lose the ability — a person knows he will not be able to do some things any more, and it is not dramatic, just factual,
- you lose a connection that was, and is not — sometimes through divorce, more often through silence,
- you lose the illusion that you are someone else.
Each of them requires the same work: acknowledgement, then processing. Not skipping.
23. The midlife crisis: myth and truth
What is a myth
The myth is that a midlife crisis looks like a motorcycle, a tattoo and a twenty-year-old girl. It happens, but rarely — and usually to people who have been silent all their lives. The motorcycle is not the cause. The motorcycle is the symptom that is visible.
What is true
The truth is that in his forties a person sees, for the first time, that half is gone and the plan has not been completed. And it is not a question of years — it is a question of accounts.
“Until now I thought I had time. Now I know I have as much as I have.”
That is all. Everything else is how a person deals with it.
Two forms, and both are the same thing
Form one: rushing. A person starts doing everything he missed — travel, sport, women, work. Not because he wants to, but because he is afraid he will not make it. It is the same emptiness, only in motion.
Form two: stopping. A person stops. Not out of wisdom — out of fear. “There is no point in starting now.” The same emptiness, only motionless.
Both forms carry the same question: “If half is gone, what is the point of starting?”
An answer that is not comfort
The answer is not “you have half left”. That is a cliché and people do not believe it. The answer is more accurate and colder:
What you have done so far, you did for the first time, and you did not know how. What you start now, you start with experience — and that is a different kind of time. The same time gives different results.
A forty-five-year-old learns a language in a year and a half; in his twenties it took five — and he did not succeed. Not because he is smarter, but because he knows how to learn.
And practically: three years
If a man in his forties wants to check whether he still can, he does not need a ten-year plan. He needs three.
Three years is enough for a craft, a book, a company, a language, a change of career. And three years is short enough to start today, and long enough to see results.
The task: one thing, three years, and nothing else until it is finished. That is the only difference between a man who has a new stage in his fifties and one who has only an older body.
The dark side of this stage
The kind of danger changes in your forties. Until then a man was the target of other people's demands. Now he becomes the target of other people's fear — and that is worse, because fear does not demand anything. It only advises.
1. “Be careful, you might lose it”
The most common sentence a man in his forties hears from people who love him.
“Don't change jobs now, you know what the situation is.”
“Leave it, it's not the time for risk.”
“What will you do if it fails, you have children.”
“It's better this way, believe me.”
The intention is protection. But the consequence is the same as with manipulation: a man gives up something of his own and gains no data — only fear. And that repeats every year, until the time passes.
2. Fear as currency
In your forties something appears that was not there before: people who live off other people's fear. Not swindlers — entire industries. Insurance that sells unease. “Experts” who explain why everything is getting worse. News that feeds fear, because fear holds attention.
A man in his forties is the ideal customer for that fear, because for the first time he has something to lose. And that is why fear is sold as care, and care as wisdom.
3. Self-deception about the body
“It's nothing, I've been through worse.”
“It's stress, it will pass.”
“It's not time for a doctor.”
“I don't want to know; if I know, it will be worse.”
The quietest self-manipulation in the book, and the most expensive. A man of forty-five does not go to the doctor not because he cannot — but because he does not want to know. And the price is paid in his fifties, when it is found out, later than it should have been.
4. “Everything is fine”
A sentence that keeps the whole House standing, and destroys a man from inside.
— How are you?
— Fine. Everything is fine.
In your forties it is said most often, because for the first time there really is something to hide. And a man who says it is not lying to others — he is lying to himself. And that is the only lie that cannot be detected from outside.
What is seen here for the first time
In your forties it becomes visible how honest a man was with himself. If in his thirties he always chose what others wanted, in his forties it comes out as emptiness. If he occasionally chose his own, it comes out as a foundation.
Not as punishment. As an account. And an account is not negotiated.
The next part is about children leaving and parents dying. If you are in your forties, that is not yours yet — even if you think it is.
Children are still here. Parents are still here. What follows comes later, and differently from how you imagine it. Close the book here.
(If you read on, read it as preparation. One thing can be prepared in advance: tell people you love them while they are here. Not because they will leave — but because here it is not said, and it should be.)