Vaping, tattoos, drinking Monsters are all just something to do in search of a few seconds of freedom, a minute of what I think is my choice. Children aren’t allowed to be free and so they act out in ways that seem “childish” but these are quite literally the only few things they have at their disposal that they can call their own. A mid life crisis, (lets take the typical older gentleman with a twenty year old girlfriend and red sports car for example) could be seen as exactly the same action. Adults have more money, more opportunities, but an older person is just an older kid and that kid never was allowed the freedom to find what they can call their own. So the gentleman does what he has been told will make him happy. They’ll stand in a coffee line and smoke some cigarettes all in the hopes that they can be respected, finally respected as someone who exists. Cause adults exists, right?
Mid life crises are just a grown kid’s attempt, again, to find what makes them happy. Having never been nourished as a child and punished or talked down to for making “rash” decisions, grown kids are just doing what they know best because another option was never developed. And even though you have a job, a house, and make money doesn’t mean you suddenly have the qualities to make better decisions than your child self and so you repeat your “mistakes” by no fault of your own.
There are a million ways to find what helps you answer “What do I find meaningful?” and society only gives you one option: spitefully prove your childhood elders wrong by getting more letters after your surname than there are before or having a really high number in an account on your screen.
None of the suppressive paths in this world even have to be taken if we just help nurture the inner developing that every child on this planet innately knows they deserve and are begging for so they can find the answer to the question. Why do we have to make them serve the given “adult” ideology that will make them in turn become adults that don’t help the next generation. And the cycle continues.