The term “midlife crisis” was coined in 1965. Somehow, the English language got by without that phrase for the previous six hundred years, but today we probably couldn’t get along without it.
No one in the Middle Ages lived long enough to have a middle age, at least as we understand it.
In 1930, American male life expectancy was 59.
In 1960, it was 67.
That’s almost an additional decade of existence — thousands more hours of time to fret about how your time is running out. (…)
Liberal fans of Seconds praise it as a chilling condemnation of shallow materialistic American consumerism and conformity.
Yet few of them mention that when Hamilton gets a twice in a lifetime opportunity to junk all that and become a free spirited bohemian artist, he’s miserable then, too.
The perfect progressive lifestyle doesn’t satisfy Hamilton, either.
