Mid-life crises

While we are young, we lack the imagination to see ourselves at the end of our lives. Our parents and teachers inadvertently teach us a rosy picture of the future: They tell us we are capable of endless achievement and unlimited options. If we work hard and do right, finally we will be rewarded with happiness. The reward at the end of the rainbow is the pot of gold that keeps us striving without too much thought about our day-to-day lives. We are on the tracks leading to a golden sunset, and all we have to do is keep on keeping on, hang on through difficult times, keep our heads down and cope with problems as they come to us.

Many of us, as we reach the latter part of our lives, become increasingly restless. We are more and more aware of the passage of time, and of how little time remains to us. We begin to see the arc of our lives, and instead of going upward forever we see it levelling out, and even glimpse the downward sweep to the end. The promise of limitless possibility no longer exists. We are forced to recognize the limits of our accomplishments. We find ourselves thinking, "Is this all there is?" Where is the pot of gold? Where is happiness and when will it be granted to us?

Even more importantly, we recognize how unimportant our lives are in the "grand scheme of things', and that we, like everyone, must end the same way, facing the dark, knowing that we leave nothing of importance behind. We fear or deny finality, limits, death, loneliness, meaninglessness, while at the same time our recognition of their reality becomes more and more unavoidable.

To avoid this awareness we thrash about, sometimes desperately and frequently unwisely. We want off the tracks down which our personal train is traveling. This is the time of life when people have affairs, not because our sexual drive has increased, but because we desperately long for new possibilites, a different life, a different outcome. We imagine or buy the famous red sports car or something else captivating to the child within us, something to calm our fears and distract our minds. We seek distraction through sex or a religion that seems to offer us an escape from the finality of death. Some chase fame or recognition, hoping to make a mark on the sands, all the while knowing how meaningless and brief such marks are.

Our existential despair is real and is frequently accompanied by anger. We have done all the "right things" without having given much thought to our alternatives. We have lived on automatic with our eyes fixed on the future without much thought. Suddenly the end of the line looms ahead and we feel cheated of our promised rewards. Where is the happiness we sought? How did we miss our opportunities? Were there other roads we could have taken that would not lead here?

There is no cure for the limits of life. Whatever path we take leads to the same terminal. We all grow old, we lose our health and our friends. We realize how little and unimportant our contributions have been, and we die. Much of our anger comes from the realization that whatever joy and happiness we have were on the way, not waiting at the end of the road.

The thoughtlessness, the automatic choices we made all along, make us realize how little power over our lives we have actually exerted. We didn't make conscious choices, and as a result we feel powerless and cheated of our opportunities. Even at this point, we can consciously begin choosing our lives, and recognizing and owning our past choices. We can recover our sense of ownership and power, even though we cannot change the end. We can know that even when we were on automatic pilot, we were making the choices that created our lives, and that we have shaped them all along. Whatever happiness and satisfaction we have, we have ourselves created. We stop being disappointed because we no longer carry the illusions of eventual reward. Our lives are our creation. They belong to us and to no-one else, and that has to be enough.