is perceived when looking back on them. But it does not ensure that they still appear meaningful from one's current perspective. Later-life The later-life crisis often occurs around one's late 60s. It may be triggered by events such as retirement, the death of a loved one, serious illness, or imminent death. At its core is a backward-looking reflection on how one led one's life and the choices one made. This reflection is usually motivated by a desire to have lived a valuable and meaningful life paired with an uncertainty of one's success. A contemplation of one's past wrongdoings may also be motivated by a desire to find a way to make up for them while one still can. It can also express itself in a more theoretical form as trying to assess whether one's life made a positive impact on one's more immediate environment or the world at large. This is often associated with the desire to leave a positive and influential legacy behind. Because of its backward-looking nature, there may be less one can do to truly resolve the crisis. This is true especially for people who arrive at a negative assessment of their life. An additional impeding factor in contrast to earlier crises is that individuals are often unable to find the energy and youthfulness necessary to make meaningful changes to their lives. Some suggest that developing an acceptance of the reality of death may help in the process. Other suggestions focus less on outright resolving the crisis but more on avoiding or minimizing its negative impact. Recommendations to this end include looking after one's physical, economic, and emotional well-being as well as developing and maintaining a social network of support. The best way to avoid the crisis as much as possible may be to ensure that one's earlier crises in life are resolved. Meaninglessness Most theorists see meaninglessness as the central issue around which existential crises revolve. In this sense, they may be understood as crises of meaning. The issue of meaning and meaninglessness concerns various closely related questions. Understood in the widest sense, it involves the global questions of the meaning of life in general, why we are here, or for what purpose we live. Answers to this question traditionally take the form of religious explanations, for example, that the world was created by God according to His purpose and that each thing is meaningful because