It’s strange how certain terms, even ones I’ve used in conversation, correspondence, or expository writing, can go unexplained, their meanings merely abstract concepts that fit my thoughts at the time.

Until the last year or so, I think I can say with complete candor that I hadn’t the slightest idea what a “mid-life crisis” was. It happened to middle-aged people, more men than women if one were to judge by common usage of the term, and it caused odd and sometimes inappropriate behavior. That was the extent of my knowledge, and I felt more than qualified to use the term based on that definition.

Like a man referring flippantly to the experience of childbirth, I seem to have missed the mark. Certain feelings have seized me in the last few months, and I feel sure that they, far more than the cursory effort above, represent an accurate and true definition of mid-life crisis. Apparently, such crises are like heart attacks. It sometimes isn’t completely clear that you’re having one until enough symptoms click into place and the alarm goes off.

I guess the first signs came when my employers, some months ago, decided that I wasn’t valuable to them anymore. I was marked down, in a sense; they sought to acquire my services at a substantial discount.

It was at that point that I realized, as I’d written in a previous entry here, that I had essentially wasted eight years of my life building a career with that employer. Over and above that, though, was the sense that those years represented nothing accomplished. I’d helped a couple of German people live more comfortably, and I’d made some radio and TV stations some nice new toys, but what did that really mean in the grand scheme of things?

I have worked hard in building my career, such as it is. Since graduating from high school, I’ve applied myself to one pursuit or another, and aside from some typical stupidities common to many young people starting out, I put in my time and did an honest day’s work. I learned what I could, applied what I’d learned to acquire still more knowledge, and slowly gained authority in my chosen fields. My biggest mistake, I think, was that I forgot to look up as I climbed the ladder, to see where I was going. Was I headed somewhere where I could make a real difference? That’s where I wanted to be. Almost all of the people I admired or idolized had made a difference.

My mother was a nurse. In Virginia at the time, there was a particular type of nurse, with more training than the typical L.P.N.. They were the Certified Tuberculosis Nurses, or C.T.N.’s. They worked in special hospitals called sanatoriums where TB patients were isolated, made comfortable, and treated. In those days prior to World War II, there was no cure for the disease. When Streptomycin was finally discovered in 1943, most of the tuberculosis hospitals closed or were converted into more conventional hospitals. My mom was still proud of her C.T.N. certification, not relinquishing it until a nursing management position required her to complete the few additional courses and become an R.N. at about the time I turned 16.

Mom and I didn’t always get along. We were both headstrong people and had rather deep-seated beliefs that were often diametrically opposed. However, I always admired her for what she did, just as I look up a bit to all nurses today. Nursing was not an easy, glamorous, or lucrative career choice. Indeed, it was often gruesome, back-breaking, emotionally enervating work that often left her tired, frustrated, and sad. In later years, when she managed a nursing home, I got to know many of her patients, and mourned with her as each one passed away, at the same time knowing that their last years were infinitely more pleasant because of her caring manner and devoted attention to their needs and desires.

My father fixed television sets and radios for a living. Having grown up in coal country, he wanted to work in the mines, but his six foot, four inch frame was too big. He learned to fix electric mine cars instead, and did so until he was diagnosed with TB in his early 20s. He found himself under my future mother’s care, and admired her as much as I one day would. Retrained in electronics, he began a career with Sears, Roebuck and Company, spending nearly thirty years in that same job.

I doubt that he felt he was making a difference changing tubes in TV sets. When I became a Cub Scout, he immediately became involved with the program. Eventually he became the leader of my Cub Scout pack, and later followed me into the Boy Scout program, becoming my troop leader as well. Something about scouting must have been rewarding to him. He remained with the program long after I moved on, and in the lives of the kids he led, he made a difference. He also worked hard to mold and guide the lives of his two children; we are his living legacy.

My uncle John was a Marine infantryman. My uncle Bruce was a member of an elite Navy diving unit. My uncle Bill was a medic. My aunt Kay was a medical laboratory technician, and my cousin Bill was also a Marine who fought in Vietnam. I’m quite certain every one of those people saved many, many lives. People live today who might not have lived. That is making a difference.

A few weeks ago I watched a show on TV called “Whale Wars.” It’s a typical reality TV show, except that instead of following the lives of some plastic losers on a deserted island, it follows the efforts of the Sea Shepherds, who are bound and determined to stop illegal whaling by the Japanese in the Southern Ocean.

My first impression was, “These people have got to be crazy.” After all, the crew is unpaid, the voyages are a month long or longer, they’re putting themselves in harm’s way to save whales that are being hunted to extinction, and they’re doing it not for money or for recognition, but because it’s the right thing to do.

After a very short period of reflection, my second impression was, “These people are making a difference in a way that I never have, and perhaps never will.” Suddenly the lunatics were heroes, and I wanted to be out there with them.

The harsh, difficult realization that I have done nothing with my life that will leave any lasting effect has been devastating me of late. I’m 46 years old, and I’ve not lived my life in a way conducive to above-average longevity. I’m fat, out of shape, and not particularly healthy. It doesn’t take a physician to come to the conclusion that the sun is setting, not rising, on my life from here on out. Being past my prime and realizing I’ve not even scratched the surface of what I wanted to accomplish by now is a bitter pill to swallow.

Some people say I’m being maudlin when I get this way, and that I’m just looking for validation, for pity, or for reassurance. Believe me when I say that I want none of these things, and that if they were offered they would be of no comfort whatsoever. Validation requires something to validate. Pity is pointless, and reassurance rings hollow without substantive proof. In my days as an EMT, I saved a life or two or three, and perhaps those people represent a difference I will leave behind when I go, but set those aside and it’s clear that when my work is done here, a year later nothing will be any different than it would have been had I never existed.

I am not sure what I can do this late in the game to try to salvage some meaning from this life, and to do something that truly does make a difference. It is the subject of much internal turmoil for me, though, and it has become a distraction to the point where I recognize that I am not myself lately. My bank made a stupid mistake the other night, shutting off my check card “to see if it was really me using it,” and I had to call them. Usually, I make an effort in such situations to be at least minimally polite, but I lost my temper. Allison, standing beside me, said nothing, but I know she noticed.

Allison understands, I think, what I’m going through. She tries to tell me I’ve accomplished more than I think, and that I have indeed made some sort of meaningful difference with my life, but I’m just not feeling that way, and no amount of warm fuzzy logic is going to change the standard I’m holding myself to. I love her for trying and for enduring my endless introspection, my self-criticism, and sometimes my fatalism.

I don’t seek fame, glory, recognition. Those are selfish goals, and I’ve done enough self-serving, meaningless things in my life. What I do want is to make a difference. I want there to be at least one thing that people can point to after I am mere worm food and say, “That wouldn’t be what it is if Scott hadn’t been here.” It’s not about pride or recognition or glory. It’s more about meaning; it’s about my life having a purpose, and about my having a reason to exist, other than combining organic matter with oxygen and producing fertilizer and methane. I am good at that, but metabolism is hardly an impressive lifetime achievement.

To slightly modify a well-known laconic phrase, the self-flagellation will continue until morale improves. Thanks for listening.