Crisis is the new normal. Everywhere we look we’re being offered therapy courses, self-help books, yoga classes and anti-burnout workshops. Everything, from a day out with the family to the next G8 conference has the potential to develop into some sort of crisis. But how did we get here? What exactly are life crises and what do they mean?
Dirk Knipphals examines how a low-level, everyday state of emergency has became part of our daily routines; our grandparents wouldn’t even have known what a crisis is, in the modern sense. Knipphals charts how the idea slowly spread to post-war suburbia. Significantly, he shows us why crises are vitally important. When things get tough, we can prove to ourselves that we’re strong; we grow through difficulty. In the long run, crises strengthen our self-belief, offer us a way to know ourselves better and demarcate the phases of our lives. Be it puberty, breakups, midlife crisis, retirement blues – the author shows us both the constructive use and the deeply comic aspect of these times of turmoil. Our lives, he concludes, wouldn’t be worth living without them.
