Re-evaluating everything about our lives.

 

This may be one of the most brutal National Day holidays I ever had to live through as I attended two wakes - one for a secondary school classmate who fought cancer and another for an ex-colleague who suddenly passed away. I thought perhaps for my own mental health, I highlighted some of my thoughts on this blog, just to get this out of my system.

a) Signal that middle age is coming

One of the surest signals of middle age is when you get fewer wedding invitations and begin showing up for more wakes. This should be a sign to change your approach to life. Some would go through a midlife crisis, and others must think much deeper about their relationship to work. 

b) The purpose of wakes

While it might sound morbid, I suddenly have some insight about funeral wakes. 

What is a wake for? Wakes cannot be for the dead as they don't even know you are there. While it might be for the loved ones to grieve, your presence can't improve the situation.

The wake is ultimately for the attendees to find closure, determine what happened, and whether the family can move on. In both wakes I attended, it was a way for folks who had long lost contact to get together again to catch up on what had transpired. In many wakes I attended, my friends made a promise to meet up under much happier circumstances. 

c) Shifting from achievements to joy

The hardest part about both wakes I attended was that both deceased were 49—the same age as me. Did my friends find any joy in life? Or were they still in the throes of seeking achievement in life? I highly doubt that Singaporeans my age have started to smell the roses. 

Everyone knows there will come a point in life when you take your foot off the pedal and start seeking more pleasure and improving relationships at home. But no one knows when the right time is to do that because we don't know how many good years we have left to live. 

I've been off conventional employment for a decade. I sometimes question my decision to drop a decade of earning power to build a portfolio career that paid a fraction of what I used to earn. 

After this week, I don't think I have any regrets anymore. 

d) What gives you happiness

Only three things cause happiness - oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine. Secretion of these chemicals is not fully under our control. 

Before middle age, we try to sacrifice short-term happiness to bring long-term satisfaction. In the process, we give up some health and mess up our lives a little. If we are lucky, we get some money in the process. In the middle, we are not too ready to take our foot off the pedal, but the search for long-term achievement and satisfaction reaches a state of diminishing returns. 

Some of my pals can't quit their jobs, but some practical fixes suit middle-aged people.

If we can't pick up more positives, we can aggressively eliminate the negatives. It's a concept in IT Security; we can reduce the surface area of attacks. 

I advised a friend recently who had an old friend who had recently grown bitter and made every social encounter quite unpleasant. This friend liked questioning her spouse's achievements or showing off what some rich people were doing, and it's been happening for years.

In Singapore, we have normalised this behaviour (because of Chinese New Year ) until we have grown to accept it as part of our social lives.

But Gen Z knows better. I've always wondered why we don't turn to a younger generation for their wisdom?

I explained that her friend feels insecure and has chosen nasty, defensive behaviour to amplify my friend's insecurities. This is a red flag in Gen Z relationships, and she needs to re-evaluate it for her own mental health. I then told her to consider "grey-rocking" the relationship—another innovation from Gen Z where you behave like a boring grey rock to disinvite further attacks from narcissists. 

The problem with us Gen Xers is that we do not have the psychological vocabulary to recognise people's attempts to inflict trauma on us. Gen Z has all sorts of wonderful lingo like gaslighting, cookie-jarring or what a situationship is. 

At this time, we're still in the middle of the seventh month Ghost Festival. 

We can get back into regular programming soon on this blog.