In the middle of the journey of our life,
I came to myself within a dark wood
where the straight way was lost.
Ah! how hard it is to tell of that wood,
savage and harsh and dense,
the thought of which renews my fear.
So bitter is it, that death is hardly more.

That's Dante folks, writing of his own midlife crisis. That's the fourteenth century. Six hundred years have passed and we're still into it. It's at that midpoint in our personal continuum when our delicate lives hang in the balance. We look behind us to see how far we've come and we realize that our past isn't a solitary trail through secret woods, but a vista as big and expansive as the ocean itself, with our experiences stretching to the horizon like tiny dot-like sail boats, sucked up into the enormous sea.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

A toast to old lang syne, for my own mid-life crisis at twenty-two, my lost year. To excess, forgetfulness, failure, and blindness. In many ways, friends--the best year of my life.

[Browse Italian and English on-line editions of The Divine Comedy or purchase The Inferno]