Midlife Pivot
What to do when time is running out
“As I turned my head and looked across the table from me, I saw a small boy with ruffled brown head and intense blue-grey eyes. Shocked, I realized that he was a five-year-old version of myself. I looked into his eyes and he quietly said, ‘What have you done with my life?”’
To this account of a dream by Bud Harris, my imagination, inspired by great Bronnie Ware’s book “Top Five Regrets of the Dying”, adds a description: it takes place at the hospice and there’s little time left.
But I’m not there yet. Halfway through my life adventure, I understood I cannot repeat day after day and year after year in the same worn out pattern. I didn’t know what to do exactly, so I thought it best to investigate this Midlife phenomenon. I did my best to condense my findings in a few articles.
You are probably not there yet either. Are you also somewhere halfway through your life adventure? If so, you have lived long enough to evaluate your experience and you have another go to define what this is all about. You have an opportunity to finally, really grow up.
OK, but what does it mean?
What does it mean to “become the best version of yourself,” “awaken the giant within you,” or to self-actualise?
The approach that seems to make the most sense would be to look into yourself and understand what really drives you. This recommendation is reasonable, except you may choose to focus on the wrong things. You may choose to focus on meeting unmet needs from your earlier development, or you may choose to adhere to other people’s expectations.
The former manifests itself mainly through insatiable hunger for self validation and the latter is happening mindlessly as busyness sucks you in.
Sometimes it’s the same thing. Usually, it means doing more of the same, as if life was one uninterrupted continuum.
But this Midlife period is one big interruption in that, by realising you are halfway through our journey, you may want to make sure you are squeezing as much juice as possible. This is your window of opportunity to find out what to do with the rest of your life.
We need to seize this opportunity because, as James Hollis stressed, “we cannot choose not to choose, for not choosing is a choice from which consequences flow, and the inner split between soul and world widens.”
“We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning-for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will be at evening have become a lie.” Carl Jung
To prepare for the evening, to be ready for the second half of our life, you need to deal with the history’s unmade bed. Only when this bed is made, can you begin to look for the best version of yourself.
This strategy is based on neutralizing our pre-programmed scripts so that we can understand what is really, genuinely important to us. Once we have this knowledge, we need to find the courage and energy to move forward.
Self awareness before self improvement. Period.
This is a more concise version of the full article on the topic — “Lost at Midlife”.
