Midlife doesn't just come upon you all of a sudden and without warning like a roaring avalanche. Instead, it creeps up on you gradually and quietly. In 1986, carbon dioxide gas, bubbling up from Lake Nyos, West of Cameroon, softly and silently killed more than 1700 people and livestock within a 25km radius. Most of those affected had no idea what had overcome them. Although you'll probably not experience those kinds of dire consequences at the onset of your midlife transition (it would probably not rob you of your life), you can, nonetheless, be robbed of much that you value and much that makes your life worthwhile.
As you progress more and more deeply into your midlife transition, if you haven't prepared yourself physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually for what's coming, you may find yourself plunging almost imperceptibly deeper into a sort of life-draining depression. You can almost feel your joy ebbing away, as those experiences that used to thrill and delight you now feel boring and silly. You may feel like some of your favorite pastimes are no longer worth the effort. For many men, even their sex lives become — dare I say it? — boring. How does it feel to be sinking ever deeper into a dull, gray sameness with no clear indication of a direction you could take that would improve your sorry state? It's a feeling not unfamiliar to many in the midlife transition: hopelessness. Is it any wonder that so many people try to break out?
I don't want to indulge in petty partisan politics here: but the contrast been last week and this feels extreme. If you've never had the feeling of being ashamed of your homeland, it's a 'must miss,' let me tell you! For many reasons that were brought out over the course of the US election campaign (and for many personal reasons), my sense of patriotic outrage after the attacks of September 11, 2001 faded into a sense of embarrassment — and even shame — over the face that this country presented to the rest of the world. I'm not speaking 'right' or 'wrong' here, only how I felt as a guilty bystander. I lived through the Viet Nam era (although I was a seminary student and exempt from the draft, many of my friends weren't). In fact, I watched most of the 1970's from my school abroad, which gave me an incredible 'world's eye view' of the whole complex of events. I saw what the world saw, and it taught me how (and why) to assume a global perspective. I saw and I felt what's been going on here for the last number of years, and it disturbed me badly enough to encourage me to make plans to expatriate. 'My country: love it or leave it?' "OK," said I, "just point the way."
I tell this personal tale only because so many others walk that same walk, only instead of a country or a society, it's a career, a position, a marriage, a family . . . something that weighs heavily on their shoulders and makes them want out. How bad does it have to get for a man to turn vicious toward the woman he loved (or a woman toward the man she loved)? How bitter do you have to feel to make you walk out on your career in the middle of the worst economic situation since the great depression? What kind of desperation do you have to reach to let yourself go into any of the -isms that afflict the middle aged? Yet, if walking (or running) away doesn't help the situation, what does? Take a look around you right now, and you'll see the answer perhaps more clearly than at any other time, at least in my lifetime. The answer to our midlife dilemma is simply this: hope.
I know that I've written about this before, but folks generally get the ideas of 'faith' and 'hope' all confused. When they say, 'I believe that God will get me out of this,' what they really mean is that they have hope that they'll escape the current predicament. So, when people talk about faith but really mean hope, what are they talking about when they talk about hope? Many times, I'm afraid, it's just wishful thinking: 'I hope I'll win the lottery this week.' 'I hope it won't rain on our picnic this afternoon.'
In that case, what is 'faith'? What is 'hope'? Faith implies the acceptance of things as they are ("the serenity to accept the things I cannot change"). Faith means having the conviction that, regardless of how things may appear, there really is a greater purpose behind it all, even if I can't see it. Life, with all deference to Samuel Beckett, is not a theater of the absurd. If 'faith' can be defined as 'acceptance', what, then, is 'hope'? My synonym for hope is trust. If you can accept that there is a higher or deeper purpose behind all the insanity that surrounds us, you should as easily (or with as much difficulty) conclude that whatever purpose brought you here to this moment has the power to sustain you. Where can you find the wellspring of hope in the world that can keep you from caving in to any avalanche of despair? More importantly, where can you discover the wellspring of hope that will keep you from giving up on your dreams, your career, your relationship, your family, or yourself?
The wellspring of your hope arises from your awareness of your own destiny and purpose. Think for a moment about the universe. There are only two possibilities: the universe is eternal (always was and always will be), or it had a beginning and will have an end. Everything that our studies of the universe have shown us tells us that the universe is finite, not infinite: that it had a beginning, and that it will have an end. What many people who acknowledge that much don't fully appreciate is that therefore the universe is vector: it must be expressed as a line with direction. It's going from somewhere (the Big Bang?) and it's going toward somewhere (the Big Crunch?). It therefore has a destiny. Once it set out on its course, it's destiny was established — not as a foregone conclusion, but as a distinct set of possibilities. If that's true with the universe, it's equally true for you.
Before you've gained an understanding of your personal destiny and purpose, or when circumstances have disrupted your equilibrium and left you questioning your own identity, no flight, no hiding, no covering up the issues will ever restore your hope to you. That can only happen by going within . . . deep within. The midlife transition, because it brings you face to face with both your hopelessness and your hope, is no place for sissies or cowards. It's essentially a spiritual transition that challenges your own self-awareness. 'Alright, you!' it seems to shout, 'Who are you really and what are you doing here?' If you're man enough (or woman enough) to stammer out an honest answer, if you have the strength to grapple with your life's purpose without flinching or pretense, you will — I promise you — uncover and unseal the wellspring of your hope. Once you've drunk deeply of hope, you'll never more have need either of cowardice or of despair. Hope, after all, springs eternal.
H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2009 H. Les Brown
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