Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“an individual person has a set of desires, concerns or, as I shall call them, projects, which help to constitute a character”; these “ground projects [provide] the motive force which propels him into the future, and gives him a reason for living.”

end? If my problem is an excessive investment in telic activities, the solution is to love their atelic counterparts, to find meaning in the process, not the project. If your problem is mine, this solution will work for you.

Call it the first rule for preventing a midlife crisis: you have to care about something other than yourself.

The point I am making here is that it is not sufficient for meaning in life that one attend to the present, to the atelic activities in which you are engaged. It matters what you are doing, not just that you are doing it in the Now.

But you can meditate for insight, if not into the no-self view, into the value of the atelic.

The key to happiness, then, is managing one’s expectations. (This seems like the right time to warn you that you are reading a very mediocre book.)

You need the mastery of mental focus, of your own thoughts and feelings, that is nurtured by mindfulness meditation.

Call it the first rule for preventing a midlife crisis: you have to care about something other than yourself.

How should we think about the lost opportunities, the regrets and failures, the finitude of life and the rush of activities that drive us through it?