Yikes! I'm A Suburbanite!

Call it The Big Chill Syndrome. Our youth-oriented culture seems to idealize the risk-taking 20s - and devalue the more settled decades that follow. But, as Early Show Contributor Martha Quinn reports, midlife doesn't necessarily mean mediocrity. It can mean metamorphosis, too.

For instance, in the '80s, Nick Turner and his wife, Hilary, were stars in the rock 'n' roll fast lane. Nick was in the punk band Lords of the New Church, and Hilary was a singer with the group American Girls.

But a couple of decades later, they have moved from the fast lane to a suburb of Los Angeles. And they are as surprised as anyone by how happy they are.

"When I would hear friends from high school got married and had kids, it was, like, prison! Death! I was, 'Look! Ooh! She can't talk, 'cause she's taking her kids to Gymboree. Ooh, I'd kill myself.' I just thought that was just the worst death sentence, ever," recalls Hilary.

Says Nick, "I'm very lucky. I have a beautiful wife, beautiful children, a beautiful house. I have a job I love. I have some toys to play with. And I couldn't really ask for much more."

He is a senior vice president with ARTISTdirect.com, and Hilary is preparing to become a kind of cutting-edge Martha Stewart with her own TV show next fall.

The passing of years does not have to mean the dwindling of life.

"Aging is what happens when you stop growing," says Dr. Ralph Metzner, author of The Unfolding Self.

The energy of youth is "a wonderful creative thing, but there's no need to idealize it," he says. "It is what it is. And the sort of mellowness that can come when somebody grows old in a balanced way is also a very good quality. It's a beautiful quality."

Transformation can come in many different ways. Lucy Scharenberg's wake-up call was her mother's battle with ovarian cancer. When she was in college, says Lucy, she was "very driven. I couldn't spend five minutes without studying. If I spent five minutes just talking to someone, I felt guilty."

Her mother's illness changed not only Lucy, but her whole family.

"It really kind of woke us up, and I really realized how precious life is and how every moment is important," she says. "And I don't care as much about the little things that I used to care about."