For the last two months, I have been in the final push of finishing my latest textbook, which means I have been living in a state that can only be described as feral academic chic.
There have been stacks of notes, too many open tabs, and an alarming number of conversations with myself about whether a sentence is clear, useful, or merely pretending to be.
The chapter I have been writing and editing most recently is on behavioural economics and consumer behaviour, which is really just a formal way of saying, why people do the things they do, especially when they insist they are being perfectly rational.
And because my thoughts, as they are wont to do, rarely stay inside the designated container, all of this has begun to bleed into the rest of my life.
At first, I was thinking about consumers. Why we buy the thing we do not need. Why we choose the familiar brand. Why we keep subscriptions we meant to cancel in 2021. Why the free tote bag still holds such mysterious power over otherwise intelligent people.
But then, inevitably, I started thinking less about consumers and more about us.
About my friends. About myself. About other people who have made certain decisions without quite realizing they were making them. Not reckless decisions. Not foolish ones. Often very impressive ones.
The career. The household. The standards. The systems.
Behavioural economics has a way of making your life sound like a case study.
Status quo bias is why we keep doing things the same way long after the original circumstances have changed.
The endowment effect is why people stay in lives they have outgrown.
Confirmation bias is why we keep believing our optimization is working when it is not.
Loss aversion is why we will not let go of the version of ourselves we have so carefully built.
Which is how I found myself, somewhere between editing a textbook paragraph and making yet another cup of coffee I did not finish, wondering whether midlife is not a crisis at all.
Maybe it is just the moment we finally notice the defaults.
There is a moment, somewhere in midlife, when you begin to realize that many of the major decisions in your life were not exactly decisions.
They were defaults.
You did not sit down one morning, freshly caffeinated and clear-eyed, and say, “I think I shall build an identity around competence, usefulness, speed, productivity, emotional containment, excellent stationery, and the ability to keep a household, career, inbox, family system, and minor institutional crisis from collapsing before lunch.”
It just happened.
One reasonable choice at a time.
You said yes because it was easier than explaining why no was necessary. You stayed because leaving seemed dramatic. You worked harder because working harder had always worked before. You kept the systems because, frankly, the systems were beautiful. There were tabs. There were categories. There may have been a notebook involved that opened perfectly flat.
And then, years later, you look around at the life you have built and realize that some of it still fits, some of it pinches terribly, and some of it is being held together by sheer force of personality.
This is where behavioural economics starts to feel less like an academic field and more like someone has been reading your diary.
Status quo bias is the central argument of every Type-A woman’s life.
It is the reason we keep the schedule, the role, the level of responsibility, the tendency to volunteer first and resent later. We keep the version of ourselves who could do it all because, at one point, she saved us.
She was useful. She got things done. She made the appointment, remembered the permission slip, edited the proposal, booked the flights, found the missing cleat, replaced the printer cartridge, and still somehow knew there was a chicken in the freezer.
No wonder we are loyal to her.
She is exhausting, but she has a résumé.
Then there is the endowment effect, which is the reason people stay in lives they have outgrown simply because they are already theirs.
We overvalue what we have because we have it.
This applies to houses, jobs, relationships, identities, committees, handbags purchased in Paris, and versions of ourselves that once made perfect sense. It is astonishing how sentimental one can become about one’s own suffering when one has invested enough time in it.
There is a particular kind of woman who can look at a life that is making her tired, brittle, and faintly murderous and still think, “But I worked so hard to get here.”
Which is true. You did.
You built the reputation, became the reliable one, kept the children alive, chaired the thing, hosted the dinner, remembered the birthdays, and became the sort of person other people describe as “so capable,” which is both a compliment and a warning label.
And because you built it, it feels almost rude to outgrow it.
As if the life might be offended.
As if the old identity might stand in the hallway with its arms crossed, saying, “After everything I’ve done for you?”
Confirmation bias is even worse because it lets us keep believing our own press releases.
See? I am fine. I handled that week beautifully.
Never mind that we handled it while sleeping badly, clenching our jaw, answering emails from the bathtub, and developing a mysterious pain that starts somewhere near the hip and ends in a general distrust of humanity.
We tell ourselves optimization is working because the machine is still running.
The groceries are bought. The work is done. The children have not become international fugitives. The garden, while not exactly relaxed, is alive. We are alive. Therefore, surely, the system works.
But sometimes the system only works in the way a toaster works when you have to hold the lever down with a butter knife.
And then, of course, there is loss aversion.
The big one.
The reason we are so reluctant to let go of the version of ourselves we have built.
Change may lead to something softer, freer, and more honest. But the old life is known. It has passwords saved. It knows where everything goes in the dishwasher.
The new life asks terrible questions.
What if you stopped proving?
What if you did less?
What if you were not available for every emergency, especially the ones caused by other people being disorganized near you?
What if ease is not a collapse of standards, but a different standard entirely?
There comes a point when all the optimizing starts to look less like ambition and more like fear.
Fear of falling behind. Fear of disappointing people. Fear of becoming irrelevant. Fear of discovering that if we stop doing quite so much, the world will not fall apart, which would be both a relief and, frankly, a little insulting.
Behavioural economics gives all of this a language, which is helpful, because otherwise we might simply call it another day in midlife.
It says you are not irrational exactly. You are human. You are making choices inside systems of habit, identity, fear, attachment, and reward.
~ Danielle
The Midlife Syllabus
Lesson #27:
Not every life you worked hard to build still needs to be defended.
Beauty, Grace & Daily Artistry
A small, imperfect pleasure: I bought a notebook this week that I absolutely did not need, which is different from buying a notebook one does need, although I cannot explain how.
But I have placed it on my desk, where it gives off the quiet promise that a better, more elegant version of me may still arrive.
What I’m Reading, Watching, or Listening to
Reading
Strangers: A Memoir of a Marriage by Belle Burden. It had me hooked as soon as I found out her grandmother was Babe Paley. I’m a sucker for anything based in last-millennium wealthy Manhattan.