I hear you very clearly, Gary. I have a slight advantage in having survived what should have been a fatal heart problem five years ago, simply through the sheer luck of being in the right place when it happened. 17 doctors agree that I should have dropped dead several months before even the slightest symptom appeared. What I learned then about the utter preciousness of every moment of life hasn't left me. Everything since then is gravy.

So follow the advice of some of the previous posters here. Yes, you're far more aware of your mortality, and still wondering where the wisdom of age is ... and that's fine, it's part of the midlife awakening. But don't spend too much time dwelling on what's been lost. Start thinking about what you've gained: a visceral knowledge of mortality, an in-your-bones realization that you only a limited amount of time here. But it's your time! Make the most of it!

I don't know if there's any ultimate meaning or not, but you have the opportunity to find or make a meaning of your own. Do the brooding, do the self-exploration -- it never really stops, you know -- but let that be a beginning for you. It's a means, not an end.

(Gen Xers & tweeners, I know this is boring as hell right now. I know it was for me at your age. But you may feel just a bit differently some 25-35 years down the line.)

LW, someone who's 95 & has a meaningful, pursposeful life is still young. Someone who's 25 & unable to find any joy or fulfillment is already old.

So by all means, pursue singing if that brings you joy ... but look more deeply inside, as well. You're in the Slough of Despond right now, and you've got to figure out how you got there, why you're still there, and how you're going to get out. Making external changes in your life may help you do so. But the real changes have to be inward.

A previous poster suggested "Madame Bovary." Definitely a good start, but don't stop there -- do some serious reading. Listen to a wealth of music. Wrestle with some of those Big Questions. Work on a more meaningful life by coming to understand who & where you are right now, and who & where you want to be in the years ahead.

Because you'll probably hit the Slough of Despond again. I've done so several times already (turning 54 this coming winter), and I expect it'll happen again. You're life isn't static -- or it shouldn't be, not for too long.

Look, I'm not suggesting some pallid, New Age "be the change you want to see & all will be sunshine & flowers" nonsense. It's hard, lengthy & often painful work. But it's worth doing. It's your LIFE, LW. Isn't that worth every bit of energy & effort you've got?

to John Bunyan & "The Pilgrim's Progress" -- he knew what he was doing when he coined that phrase!

Let me recommend James Hollis' "Swamplands of the Soul" -- despite its title, NOT a mushy self-help book, but a rather more philosophical & Jungian approach to these arid patches of life. It doesn't offer 12 easy steps or empty aphorisms, it just makes you think & put your life into deeper perspective. At least it helped me to do that.

But more than that, immersing myself in the arts helped immensely. It made me realize how shallow & superficial so many of my aspirations & expectations were -- more often than not, supplied by the mass market world around me. I've started to understand how being a whole human being is an endless work in progress .. and more importantly, that its goal is the very opposite of self-centered navel-gazing. It's about the quality of one's life, not one's ego. A vital distinction!

... is that too many people have bought into the mass-marketed idea that they're entitled to 100% happiness every minute of every day of their lives.

But they shouldn't have to work at it.

And they certinly shouldn't have to suffer, or doubt, or question, or live with pain, or loss, or despair, not even for an instant.

In short, what they want is an escape from being human. And those who approach that desired goal wind up being even more shallow & superficial than they were when they started.

What they call "happiness" is their own particular opiate. Avoiding the experience of life itself is their real goal. The idea that life is complex, not always happy or pleasant, or that it might be richer if it has meaning & depth -- all that's totally foreign to the self-helpers. Most have never even been exposed to such ideas. Few would find them palatable.

The books they ought to be reading are right there on the shelf marked "Classic Literature." Except that such books are too much work & require the reader to think. No, better to pay big bucks for the next magic formula & hope it works this time ...

And this is what passes for "life" for too many Americans!