It’s somewhat entertaining to watch your friends turn 40, especially if you’re a few years younger than they are. I’m 37, which means that I have three more years to write this column, and then I will no longer be a “young adult.”

But I hang with a slightly older crowd, and I am going through a period of watching all my friends get hitched and then have babies. Now I’m watching them freak out at that whole “Yikes! I’m halfway through my life!” realization often called the “midlife crisis.”

Some of my friends, the ones who never worked out in college, have begun to compete in triathlons. Others decided to drop the corporate world in one drastic movement, leaving almost two decades of experience behind, plus their newly acquired corner office, to pursue the life of an artist.

So it was with great interest that I read a recent article in The Washington Post by Stefanie Weiss about the so-called midlife crisis.

Her theory is that people experience bouts of anxiety and introspection the year before they turn an age that ends in a zero. She herself experienced what she considers a midlife crisis at 39. She went through a period of self-doubt, what she describes as the “what’s-it-all-about and get-me-out” syndrome. Then she turned 40, got a new job, and all was quiet for another 10 years, until she got to 49.

That’s where she sits right now, about to be 50 and wondering: Am I in yet another midlife crisis?

So Weiss took her question to five experts – two psychologists, an economist, a journalist and a cultural anthropologist. Each answered the question differently, which I found rather amusing. It was like hearing advice on how to get your kid to sleep through the night: Let her cry, don’t let her cry, let her cry, don’t let her cry, and so on.

The philosophy that made the most sense to me was the one of columnist Sue Shellenbarger of The Wall Street Journal.

In her book “The Breaking Point: How Female Midlife Crisis Is Transforming Today’s Women,” Shellenbarger asserts that women in their 30s and 40s (and I’m thinking the same is true of men) wake up to the fact that their mortality isn’t as far off as they had thought, that death is approaching ever so gradually and they have so many unfulfilled dreams and desires.

“It’s all about anticipation that you’re going to die without having given expression to parts of yourself that you cherish,” explained Shellenbarger to Weiss.

I concur, as I am having that conversation over and over again with friends, especially as our parents age and die, or siblings and friends get sick, some of them dying prematurely.

Their deaths prod us to ask ourselves: “Am I leaving anything out? What if I get cancer tomorrow? Will I be satisfied with what I have done?”

Of course I believe the young adult who has the backing of a strong faith life goes into midlife introspection with clearer vision than the average young adult. For believers death isn’t the end but a beginning. And many of us have positioned our faith and family front and center. That’s not going to change.