Why would anyone at the age of 50-something bore another person about how banal their life is? I mean, is this about that or hyping some hybrid car that purports to reduce our consumption on oil, but in reality, doesn't do a very good job of it?

Here's what you tell that person: "I've listened to you piss and moan for 30 years now about your life. And quite frankly, I'm tired of it. I mean, we're both at the age now where either of us could have a heart attack and drop dead, and I would hate like hell that the last thing I heard was your whining. And wouldn't you hate it if the last thing you did on the planet was to be sitting here complaining about your life? Please. Find someone else to bore to death."

Oh yes I find it so unseemly when people in their fifties ... their FIFTIES, for pete's sake, act like it's still worth it to think about new directions or new starts or rethinking their lives at all. 54, I mean, that's OLD! How unseemly to do anything but just get a shawl and sit in the rocker. And stop whining. And as Rose says, at 50 you're likely to drop dead of a heart attack at any second! Isn't that when most people do so?

It also struck me that Keillor's friend must really have enjoyed his confidence being betrayed like that, I don't mean that he printed his name, but in the sense of GK listening, seemingly sympathetically, then going online to reveal that he thinks the guy is a putz and a wimp for whining. With friends like that, who needs a mid-life crisis to feel crappy? One benefit for GK is that this guy won't be calling again, that's certain.

To summarize: Message for the elderly in their 50s: Give it up. Why bother. It's all over, and it's unbecoming of you to act otherwise. Sit here on the porch and take a nap. And if you have trouble nodding off, you can always read one of Garrison Keillor's columns, that will put you to sleep faster than anything on the market.

What a pleasant piece I found Just Follow the Map to be.

All very relatable at sixty something.

Life is just another form of evolution isn't it?

John Stumbo

Wanting to get in the car and drive till the gas runs out, as I watch the house burn to the ground in the rearview mirror.

Unfortunately, the only maps we have in life are outdated and show only the routes we have taken. There is no GPS and by the time we find out where we are, we are no longer there.

That's the beauty part.

God did I need to read this article today. Overwhelmed by Christmas expectations ... visiting family in Canada ... I ran away to a seedy motel, listening to hookers make some other lonely people happy as I lay there in my bed, contemplating my life. Finding confort in my "woe is me" solitude, I booked another night in this motel ... it was the next best thing to running away (I had no car) and just review my needs and maybe prioritize them a bit better. I was a burnt out 54 year old grandmother and wife with a healthy extended family members on both sides. The big question was where was I in this picture. Next year at this time I hope to make that trip "out west somewhere!"

I grew up in Southern California. Back in the 1960’s in all but the hottest months of the year my friends and I would escape from our normal weekly school routine to the vast arid lands of the eastern part of the state that is generally referred to as the Mojave Desert. This was before the days of SUVs. Back then true desert rats drove jeeps or power wagons, but we managed quite successfully to navigate this vast landscape in VW Beetles, and a 1953 Chevrolet. One of the things we liked to do was just follow a dirt road and see where it led. Around or over small hills and thru ravines often we would discover a long abandon mine, small house or shack. Many times I am sure we were the first humans to come upon them since who ever it was that used them had for some reason or other, closed the door and never returned. On other occasions the road we followed would divide and then divide again, each time the path to choose becoming less obvious, eventually leaving us in the middle of nowhere with no clear choice as to which direction to proceed at all.

Nature has provided us with a map for our lives as well, that all of us following more or less, whether we are aware of it or not. The problem is as I see it that once we get a little past middle age that road becomes must less distinct. I am convinced that this accounts for what we refer to as Mid Life Crisis. What has happened is our internal programming; the result of millions of years of evolution just basically plays out. What we think of, as Free Will is really nothing of the sort. We are all pretty much compelled by nature to find a mate, reproduce, and then provide for and protect our family. We watch the little ones grow up, and leave the nest and then that’s pretty much it. Nature doesn’t really need us to do anything more. We’ve passed the flame on to them as they set out to follow their own life’s journey. About all we’re left to do is provide any guidance we can based upon our own experiences.

Once you confront and understand this truth, it’s not so bad. I just wish someone had told me what to expect before I went thru it myself - although I probably wouldn’t have believed them if they had! Live and learn.

I met her this past summer; she was "just passing through" Chicago on her journey through the country and through life. She was 50 or 60 something, an Army vet who already buried her Army husband and Army son. With her pension (from the Army and the private sector) and her inheritance in hand, she vowed to spend her rest of her life "on the road," staying for one year in one U.S. State and then moving on, so that hopefully by the time she dies she will have spent at least one year of her life in every State in the Union. (Of course her Army experiences already gave her a head start here, but if she stays healthy for another 20 years or so she should reach her goal.)

In my dreamier moments I imagine doing the same thing once my 90-something mother departs this mortal coil and I won't have any close relative to provide for or answer to.

Right on Garrison!