Reducing Stress in Midlife: Simplify, Discard the False, Be Strict with Oneself and Forgiving toward Others

When a person reaches middle age and faces the life situation of "having elderly parents above and children below," he will truly feel that life carries great pressure.

He may have wished countless times to lay down the burden on his shoulders and make life lighter. But upon waking, the "little ones" clamoring to be fed, the "elderly" needing support, and the many responsibilities already shouldered because of work, all remind him to return obediently to the daily track and continue striving "in pain and joy."

Middle-aged people are the social group most in need of stress reduction. By middle age one's energy is gradually not as abundant as a young person's, yet the responsibilities one must bear are weighty. Young people can still squander their youth recklessly, but middle-aged people have to be far more "realistic" than the young.

Middle-aged people do indeed look much more "greasy" than the young: increasingly unkempt, increasingly unromantic in life, and most middle-aged people are both worldly and mercenary.

Arrogant young people dismiss these traits of the middle-aged, just as Jia Baoyu dismissed married women, finding them ever more repulsive. But once these young people themselves enter middle age and shoulder their own life's burdens, they will find that they have become just like the greasy middle-aged people they once disliked—both worldly and mercenary.

I may be an oddity among the middle-aged—though I also bear the responsibility of raising a family, I live a bit more poetically than most of my peers. But I sincerely understand and admire my contemporaries, and I deeply understand and sympathize with their worldly and mercenary side. I believe the vast majority of middle-aged people do not wish to live worldly and mercenary lives; they too long to continue the romance and passion of youth, but life no longer allows it.

Middle-aged people are the group I deal with most. The overwhelming majority of my patients or their families are middle-aged. I watch them struggle with faltering steps for the survival of themselves and their families; even when their profession is not respected, they endure in silence. Because their loved ones need them to hold up a home.

Especially pitiable are those patients who have reached middle age. A liver-cancer patient I have known for years, after developing liver cancer, still struggled hard for his career, because he not only had to earn money for his own treatment but also to support his family.

When his life was near its end, his family wanted to sell the house to make a last push for him; he refused. He accepted death calmly. He knew his situation was hopeless and did not wish, out of greed for life, to leave his whole family thereafter without even a home.

After developing massive liver cancer, he raised his treatment costs through business while supporting his family, and astonishingly survived more than ten years. All the hospice-care treatments he hoped I would do for him before his death I readily agreed to. But the touching refinement he had forged in life made him unwilling to impose on anyone, including the doctor treating him.

Flashy, expensive clothing has less and less appeal for middle-aged people, so they no longer look bright and polished. But beneath that sloppy exterior, many middle-aged people have forged a personal charm the young lack—their sense of responsibility, their considerate regard for others, and their steadily maturing character make them the mainstay of society.

Life's experience keeps middle-aged people from living, as adolescents do, in an illusory ideal world. Middle age is a stage that calls for "braving wind and rain, bearing disgrace and heavy burdens." In middle age, the fussy and the flashy gradually fade. As the tide recedes, life reveals its original look—like a seaside boulder battered by waves countless times, bare and rounded, rugged yet smooth.

Living at this stage of life, we sincerely move away from complicated relationships and situations that require us to disguise ourselves. My only banquet this year was one I had to attend on the second day of the Lunar New Year while paying New Year calls at relatives' homes. Apart from that, I have not attended any banquet away from home.

Disciplining oneself also becomes a very realistic choice for a middle-aged person—because we find that if we cannot control our mouths or our desires, what we say and what we set out to do will "get us into trouble" and bring extra burdens. The word "burden" itself makes one's heart race. So many dreams, so many romantic feelings, have to be cut short because of burdens.

Forgiving others is likewise a very realistic choice. If one's heart is not broad enough to forgive others, the grudges one contracts will be more than enough to make life bitter. Middle-aged life is already a frantic mess; where is there the energy to settle accounts of grudges and favors with others?

Life is not a wuxia novel, and middle-aged people are not like wuxia heroes, who never seem to worry about making a living and only need to fight and kill, settle scores with joy, and roam the world with a sword. Contracting enmity also costs time and energy.

Simplify life wherever possible; where it cannot be simplified, simplify it by force. If a person has reached middle age and still hopes to achieve something and have his own life, he must learn to organize his life—deleting everything that should be deleted: fair-weather friends and various bad habits, for instance.

If conditions permit, keep the cause we truly love and the people we truly love, and keep a respectful distance from everything else. For a middle-aged person, this is the wise choice. Life is short; the good days left to us, though still a few, are really not many, so we must cherish them.