Philosophy professor and author Kieran Setiya Photo courtesy of Kieran Setiya

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We’ve probably all been there. That question we ask ourselves when we hit our middle years: Is this all there is?

For some of us, the so-called midlife crisis can hit in our 30s, for some not until their 40s or even 50s. No matter how successful we may be, personally and professionally, the realization that there are fewer years ahead of us than behind us, that our waistline may be widening while our hair is thinning, and that opportunities are narrowing, can hit us hard.

That’s what happened to Kieran Setiya, a philosophy professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Setiya was enjoying his professional pursuits of teaching and writing, had (and still has) a happy marriage to another professor, and is a loving father. Still, he recalls in his recently published book, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide, he was feeling, as he put it, “hollow.”

“You see that what you are doing is worthwhile, but you still feel that life isn’t quite what it should be,” Setiya said in explaining that unsettling feeling.

Fortunately, Setiya didn’t go the stereotypical route and throw his life over for a fresh start. Instead, he began to explore how philosophy can help cure the midlife blahs.

Setiya is quick to acknowledge that this isn’t a typical self-help book. “I’m not a mental health professional,” he said. “I’m a philosopher seeking a better life.”

Less crisis than constraint

While people often use the term midlife crisis — which wasn’t coined until the 1960s — Setiya doesn’t think this common feeling is, for most people, a real crisis.

It’s more a sense of feeling constrained by the responsibilities many of us face at this time of life — even if the responsibilities (career, marriage, parenting, etc.) are what we wanted for ourselves.

Throw in media images that idealize youth, and Facebook posts of the exciting lives everyone else seems to be living, and you may well be left with the feeling that you’re “aging out.”

Setiya notes in his slim, highly readable book that using philosophy to address the issues of well-being is nothing new. In fact, it’s more than 2,500 years old.

Plato’s Republic, for example, concerns the role of justice in living one’s best human life, while Aristotle writes in the Nicomachean Ethics that a good life is one of virtuous activity done with reason.

Existential questions

“The questions we associate with midlife…questions about value and meaning in life…are existential ones,” Setiya writes.

Being caught between the life we live and the life we think we want to live or ought to have lived is, for most of us, a common experience. There are ways, however, to reframe that personal conflict, Setiya advised, not unlike the notion promoted in the classic ‘60s book, Be Here Now.

Setiya suggests recognizing the difference between goal-oriented “telic” activities (derived from “telos,” the Greek work for goal), and “atelic” activities, which we do purely for pleasure, whether it’s talking with friends, taking a walk, or in Setiya’s case, meditating.

Telic projects have an end point — like finishing a big project at work, getting a long-sought promotion, or buying a home — but don’t necessarily result in satisfaction because you’ll soon be on to your next goal. Atelic activities “don’t have a point,” he says. “They’re happening right now.”

Of course, making that shift is often easier said than done, Setiya acknowledged, noting that he’s trying to change his Type A, goal-oriented behavior. “But it’s a work in progress,” he admitted.

Midlife: A Philosophical Guide by Kieran Setiya, Princeton University Press, 2017, $22.95.