If you haven’t yet noticed my attraction to silly things, let me now bring it to your attention. I discovered a long time ago that, very often, silly things contain far more wisdom than sensible things. It’s one of the great ironies of our universe. Take, for example, that incredibly silly series of books by Douglas Adams that goes by the title The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. There’s enough silliness (and, consequently, wisdom) in those pages to last a person the better part of a lifetime. Take, for example, the excerpt from the Guide that appears in the third book of the trilogy (Life, The Universe, and Everything) under the heading “RECREATIONAL IMPOSSIBILITIES.” According to Adams, the Guide says this about flying: “There is an art, . . . or, rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”*
Of course, Adams (quoting the Guide) goes on to explain more about how throwing yourself at the ground is easy, but knowing exactly how one needs to go about missing the ground can be a little tricky. But I won’t pursue that, because it has nothing whatever to do with the reason I’ve brought it up at all. Besides, what on earth does this have to do with midlife or a spiritual crisis? What’s so extremely valuable about this somewhat unusual approach to flying is that it’s so silly that it’s incredibly insightful. Once again, our whole approach to something like flying is defined and pretty much wholly decided by the bucket of assumptions that we bring to it. That’s why I need to tell you that the decision that you (and many other people) may have made to reinvent yourself at midlife is exactly like the decision to learn to fly: until you empty your bucket of assumptions, you’ll keep falling flat on your face. Sound familiar? You throw yourself at the ground, but you keep not missing! You’ll need to follow me closely now: this silliness is going somewhere . . .
You may still think that, when circumstances change drastically (like they do at midlife), reinventing yourself would seem to be a very wise thing to do. I say ‘seem to be’ because that’s all based on your set of assumptions. You assume that it’s possible to ‘reinvent’ yourself, and you further assume that you know how to do it. Interestingly enough, it isn’t, and you don’t. You are the product of the sum total of your genetic makeup plus your defining experiences as determined by a lifetime of choices you made either in response to changes in your environment or in an effort to change your environment. Your life is a continuum. You may change your mind; you may change your direction; but, you’re not going to ‘reinvent’ the person that you’ve become anymore than you can ‘reinvent’ your genetic code.
Now that you’re beginning to see the problem (and being sensible isn’t working all that well), it’s time to bring on the silliness! Instead of focusing more of your time and energy on an impossibility that won’t work, why not throw out your assumptions entirely, and re-define the problem into one that will work? Specifically, in the same way as Douglas Adams redefined the problem with light from one of how to leave the ground to one of how to avoid hitting it. So, perhaps the spiritual answer to the midlife crisis is less about reinventing yourself in response to the world, and more about reinventing the world that you’re an integral part of. Let me just say that reinventing your world is a whole lot easier than missing the ground, once you’ve thrown yourself at it.
Where to start? Traditional Chinese medicine teaches that one should begin treating a problem in as remote a spot from the problem as possible. We can do the same, and, since the ‘problem’ is you, we’ll start as far removed from you as we can: with your job or career. Rather than start with the question, “How can I become a raging success in my chosen field?” you can start by telling yourself: “This is not a dress rehearsal. This is the only life I’ve got. What do I want to do with it . . . rather, what do I need to do with it?” At midlife, it’s time to take true ownership of your life. You’re not being controlled by your parents, your upbringing, your religion, your politics, or anything else outside of yourself. At midlife, it’s time to stop making excuses for why you aren’t the person you’d really like to be, and start doing something about it.
This is called ‘goal setting’ and I assume that, over the years, you’ve already heard a lot about it. If you’ve not only heard of goal-setting, but listened to what people have been telling you, then you have a very clear, distinct, and detailed vision of the life that you want to live, and you’ve banished the words “I should” “I’ve got to” “I have to” “I need to” from your vocabulary, and you’ve replaced them all with “I want to.” You’ve also succeeded in replacing the phony buck-passing phrase “I can’t” with the true self-aligned one: “I won’t.” Finally, you already know whether or not your current job or career is healthy and serves to promote your life vision, or it’s unhealthy and keeping you stuck and away from becoming the person you truly desire to be and, right now, you’re implementing a plan to change it.
German existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger defined human life as “being-in-the-world with others.” At midlife, perhaps more than at any other time, we have the opportunity to experience what he meant. ‘Others’ are not optional equipment to make use of for our own purposes. Once again, with all our relationships, spirituality challenges us to empty out our assumptions about who these people are, why they’re in our lives, and what purpose they may serve for us.
The people with whom you share an intimacy are a constitutive part of what life means for you. Whether or not you have an explicit relationship with another, you can’t just throw any of them away (no matter how tempting it may be). Each one you encounter is essential to your own human existence — not only because you rely on them for what they can provide for you or do for you — because each person you meet has something essential to tell you about who you are. This is even more true when your encounters gain intimacy. Dating, they say, is your opportunity to learn about yourself. A relationship is a 24/7 date. By reinventing how you look at the people in your life (from seeing them as obstacles or benefits to you, to seeing them as the only mirrors you have that show you who you really are), you suddenly no longer want them to change. You need them to stay as they are, because only then do you recognize that what you dislike most about anything you see in them is only your own reflection.
Finally, and most importantly — the most intimate relationship you have — your relationship with yourself. Here’s where the spiritual ‘rubber meets the road.’ For most people, adolescence and adulthood are both characterized by the assuming and shouldering of responsibilities as they go about the work of self-actualization. The focus is generally on creating a safe and secure life for ‘me and mine.’ It’s a period of acquisition and immersion into the struggle to hold on to what they’ve got, even as ‘what they’ve got’ grows and the struggle intensifies.
Regardless of the cause, at midlife, the curtain gets pulled back only to reveal the emptiness and purposelessness of a life lived for acquisition and self-aggrandizement. Whoever dies with the most toys wins . . . the booby prize. In whatever form it takes — physical, mental, emotional, spiritual or economic — life’s vagaries always intrude on the neat little plans you and I may have been making only to show us the vanity of the exclusive pursuit of health, wealth, safety and security. If youth and adulthood are all about acquisition, then midlife and maturity are all about letting go, and that’s a much more difficult lesson to learn. The meaning of your life can never be defined by your career, your relationships, or your accomplishments. Instead, on a spiritual level, the meaning of life comes from the courage you can muster to face your challenges relying not on anything external, but solely on the strength that comes from your connection to a Power greater than yourself to get you through.
The universe provides each of us with a series of life lessons. Regardless of what they may look like on the surface, they all teach only one thing: whatever it is that you choose to rely on that is not God, will be taken away. At midlife, the training wheels come off and the props are knocked away. You are left standing there with only your acceptance of life on life’s terms and your trust in God to support and guide you. If youth is the age for heroics, then midlife is the age for courage, since by now, experience has taught you what it feels like to play hard at the game of life and to lose. The trick is to stay engaged no matter what else happens.
Those who, at midlife, try to reinvent themselves will undoubtedly experience frustration and futility. “No matter where you go,” they say, “there you are.” But those who, instead, work at reinventing their world will experience a life they could only have imagined. The lessons of life are unrelenting. If you choose to avoid failure at all cost, it will surely cost you dear and all to no avail. It’s all so very silly. Learning how to live with spiritual courage is a lot like learning how to fly: it’s so simple! All you really need to do is to throw yourself at failure . . . and miss!
H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown
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*Douglas Adams, The More than Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide, Longmeadow Press, Connecticut, 1991, page 363.
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acceptance, career, challenge, courage, Midlife Mastery, midlife, relationship, Spirituality, trust, reinvent yourself
Tags: acceptance, career, challenge, courage, midlife, Midlife Mastery, reinvent yourself, relationship, Spirituality, trust
July 15th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Very nice you can never experience success without going through many failures and keeping at it. http://chetsteadmanridesagain.blogspot.com/2010/07/reinventing-yourself-5-steps-to-bring.html