The Walkabout, Midlife Edition

Sure beats a midlife crisis

Middle age is one of modern life’s great thresholds, but it has no widely recognized rite of passage. Historically, most formal rites marked the transition from childhood into adulthood; they encouraged young people to separate from an old identity, endure a tough test and return with a new role. But with lifespan growing longer and more open-ended, midlife has become its own profound transition with potential for renewed identity and purpose.

Rites of passage for adolescents disrupt ordinary childhood life through a period of testing or instruction. A well-known example from some Aboriginal Australian traditions, often described in popular culture as a walkabout, involves adolescent boys traveling through ancestral lands, learning survival skills, stories and spiritual responsibilities as a passage into maturity and self-reliance.

It’s likely such rituals developed around adolescence because, for much of human history, life was more compressed with fewer recognized stages. The transition from child to adult was the most urgent and socially consequential passage. It was the point when people became ready for work, marriage, reproduction and full membership in the community.

Modern life is significantly longer, stretching adulthood into multiple distinct chapters. People now face major thresholds in midlife. Yet our rituals haven’t caught up.

Middle-aged bodies change, family roles shift, careers dead-end, ambitions renew and the search for purpose deepens. Rite-of-passage journeys can help shape these transitions, letting people step away from old identities, test what still matters and return with a clearer sense of who they’re becoming. Not as an escape from life, but as a deliberate entry point into the next season of life.

A structured passage is a clear winner over less intentional approaches that may lead to the infamous “midlife crisis.” Much cheaper and less embarrassing. No Porsche you can’t afford or (for guys) a ponytail inflicted on loved ones.

Midlife passage rituals are far from mainstream, but more people appear to be creating them. They don’t copy traditional rituals; I don’t know anyone contemplating bar- / bat-mitzvahs for 45-year-olds (whew). But they do share a similar architecture to the traditional versions: separation from ordinary life, a period of testing or solitude, and a return with a changed sense of identity. They give form to a transition that modern culture leaves vague and unfulfilled.

An evolving ecosystem is framed around midlife reinvention: retreats, life-transition coaching and second-act programs. Outside recently covered “the rise of the menopause retreat,” explicitly framing it around women seeking answers to physical and mental challenges. Condé Nast Traveler reported that wellness retreats have seen more men participating, including men ages 35–65 seeking help with health, stress and emotional health.

Organizations like the Modern Elder Academy and Encore.org / Cogenerate have built a movement around second acts. Forbes and Maclean’s recently covered the “golden” gap year—intentional breaks once reserved for 18-year-olds—as a major labor trend for midlifers.

Some middle-aged people are turning to wilderness quests. They might involve a few days spent alone in a designated wilderness area like the Utah desert or California backcountry, with minimal food and tech, a journal and a guide nearby for safety.

Others may be drawn to silent meditation retreats to press pause on constant midlife demands. A 2025 Washington Post piece reported that silent retreats are “surging in popularity” post-pandemic, with interest in weeklong retreats at monasteries or retreat centers with phones off, simple meals and long periods of sitting and walking meditation. The ritual power comes from stepping outside ordinary speech and productivity long enough to notice what still feels essential, what’s noise, and what life’s next chapter should be.

Endurance challenges represent another type of midlife rite-of-passage. Versions include completing a first marathon, 100-mile bike ride, multi-day backpacking route or mountain ascent. Such an event is a symbolic threshold. The point isn’t athletic achievement, but testing discipline, fear and resilience—then returning with new confidence in what the body and self can still become.

Yet another rite of passage is creative immersion: stepping away from ordinary routines to pursue a long-deferred artistic ambition like writing a book or composing music. The midlifer might spend weeks, months or a year at a writers’ colony, rented cabin or fellowship devoted to a single creative work, with daily structure, solitude and distance from everyday roles. The challenge here is sustained attention. It’s also confronting self-doubt.

Like ancient adolescent rites, these modern midlife rituals require sacrifice and discomfort, including physical strain, silence, uncertainty or creative risk. The stress of the ordeal is part of what makes the life-stage transition feel pressing and fertile. It’s also what makes undertaking such a ritual so uneven: people with resources and social support are better positioned to pursue a pilgrimage, retreat, sabbatical or wilderness journey.

I’ve got my own version: I’m about to begin a year-long Knight-Wallace fellowship at the University of Michigan. It entails an extreme departure from the great comfort, meaning and satisfaction of my family life and daily work in Maryland to enter a temporary space of study, reflection and creative risk. I’ll use that separation to ask what kind of writer, spouse, father, son, friend, thinker and person I want to become in the next stage of life. The sacrifice is real, including time away from my wife and kids. The Michigan winter will do some heavy lifting on the physical strain part. But all that discomfort is what gives the experience its rite-of-passage quality.

If you were to design a rite of passage for your current stage of life, what would it look like?