How to Avoid Ending Up a Shipwreck

I was recently asked, What are the best ways to live your life your late twenties and early thirties, in order to prevent a mid-life crisis.

What a great question. Far too many people within that age category are far too busy to stop to reflect upon such issues… until the reach their 40s, and experience a mid-life crisis. By that time, I usually see them in my office, either trying to figure out how to dig themselves out of a mess, or how to make sense of the mess that someone else had created.

I offer the response I provided to the “seeker,” in hopes that it proves beneficial to others:

"You have asked THE most important question confronting all of us. Though it is always a risk being brief, especially when volumes can, and have been, written on the subject. But, I guess I would simply pass along advice from the wisest man who ever lived… Solomon.

The Bottom of Ecclesiastes is essentially Solomon’s journaling at the end of his life, after he went through a fairly huge mid-life crisis. Though he was wealthy beyond comprehension, had it all from the world’s perspective, was “born with a silver spoon in his mouth,” (the son of a King, who inherited the throne at the height of the kingdom’s stability, affluence, and power), and was blessed by God with an unearthly degree of wisdom, he ended up losing sight of all his priorities… everything he had even written about in his Proverbs… to become essentially a shell of “what might have been.” It is from that perspective that he penned his reflections, and last pieces of advice, which were preserved for all of us in the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes.

Of the nuggets he wrote within those brief 12 chapters of Ecclesiastes, here are a few that stand out to me as the best ways to avoid a mid-life crisis (these are from the New Living Translation… a very good and reliable, yet reader-friendly, translation of the Bible). I think they can be grouped into some valuable overall categories:

I. The priority of being in a proper relationship with God

2:26 “God gives wisdom, Knowledge, and joy to those who please Him.”

3:11–14 “God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end… God’s purpose is that people should fear (reverence, stand in awe of) Him.”

II. The priority of contentment and balance

4:6 “Better to have one handful of quietness than two handfuls with hard work and chasing the wind.”

6: 9 “Enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don’t have.”

5:13b–15 ″Hoarding riches harms the saver… We all come to the end of our lives as naked and empty-handed as on the day we were born. We can’t take our riches with us.”

III. The priority of cultivating meaningful relationships

4:9 “Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.”

IV. The priority of humility

5:1 “As you enter the house of God, keep your ears open and your mouth shut.”

7:9 “Control your temper, for anger labels you a fool.”

V. The priority of integrity

7:1 “A good reputation is more valuable than costly perfume.”

VI. The priority of proper perspective

7:3–4 “Sorrow is better than laughter, for sadness has a refining influence on us. A wise person thinks a lot about death, while a fool thinks only about having a good time.”

12:1 “Don’t let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your Creator. Honor Him in your youth before you grow old and say, ‘Life is not pleasant anymore.’ “

So, Solomon's advice is probably the best way to prevent ending up making a shipwreck of your life a decade or two from now.