Midlife Mastery Journal » death

Passion at Midlife

Les Brown — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 15:54:24 +0000

Today I want to write about passion. It’s not specifically about ‘sex after fifty’, but if you find that any of the ideas you read here fit, then please don’t hesitate to use them. Instead, let’s start with the word, passion. It comes from the Latin word, patior (pati, passus), and it means ‘to suffer’ or ‘to undergo’. In a derived sense, it also has a connotation of allowing or permitting something to happen, or ‘accepting‘ something that’s happening. From this little word, we get such English words as ‘patient’ and ‘passive’ as well as ‘passion’.

In the Judeo-Christian world, this week celebrated the Exodus of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, the passage through the Sea of Reeds and the hope of a promised land. Today also marks the culmination of the celebrations at Easter. They began last Sunday (‘Palm Sunday’) with the reading of one of the narrations of the death of Jesus, “Passio Domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum Johanem . . . ” (“The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to ”). The celebration culminates with the proclamation this morning at the empty tomb that, “He is risen; he is not here.” What all this has to do with us, and what it has to do with midlife is what I want to reflect on today.

After all the historical trappings have been stripped away, both Passover and Easter are the contact-points with our destiny. It’s impossible to grasp the full impact of their meaning without an appreciation of the nature of Sacred Scriptures (writings, texts) themselves. Everybody knows that, somehow, Sacred Scriptures (of all sorts) came to us through men and women under divine inspiration. Throughout the ages, these inspired writings have appeared, and they continue to do so: for example, it would be hard to argue that A Course in Miracles or the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous were not divinely inspired. Yet, are they Sacred Scriptures? Mere divine inspiration is not enough.

In order to become Sacred Scriptures, divinely inspired writings must be recognized as such by a spiritual community. In order to be so recognized, the texts must not only tell someone else’s story, they have to tell my story too: I have to be able to recognize myself in the writing. For this reason, the writings are said to be prophetic: not in the sense of foretelling the future, but in the sense that their meaning is open to new interpretation by each successive generation that encounters them. They are timeless because, for ever new reader, they are forever fresh and new.

Easter, then, can truly be said to be the celebration of the midlife passage, and, at the same time, the acknowledgment of the passionate destiny of each one of us. Significantly, Christian Easter reflects the prophetic nature of the Jewish Passover. The story of Jesus finds its full meaning only in the context of the Exodus story. The term ‘Passover’ itself comes from a Latin word, ‘passus‘ or ‘step’, from the verb pando (pandere, pandi, passus) meaning ‘to stretch’. Although they are very different roots, both patior and pando have the same participle form: passus.

It is not wrong, therefore, to see the connection between passage and suffering or acceptance in the Exodus story (the touchstone event in the history of the Jewish people), the Easter story (the touchstone event for Christians), and our own personal midlife passion. Spiritual transition and transformation are prophetic: they speak to the saving Presence of a Higher Power acting in and through the events of our personal lives.

Whether this past week you celebrated your liberation from slavery by recognizing yourself in the Passover haggadah, or today you’re recognizing a personal victory over futility and death with the women in stunned silence at the mouth of the empty tomb: either way the Scriptures are pointing out to you the deeper, more fundamental meaning and purpose of whatever it may be that you’re going through at this phase of your life. This is your Passover; this is your Passion. As such, this is also your liberation and entry into a new phase of your existence: from both a human and a divine perspective. You are assuming a brand new relationship with your personal destiny, in terms of which everything else in your experience needs to be reinterpreted.

Think about it: neither the Jewish people nor the followers of Jesus had any idea where they were going when they arrived at the chiros: the critical transitional moment in their life of faith. It took them years . . . generations . . . to gain an appreciation of what had happened to them. If today you stand at your own turning-point, your own passus (both in terms of passage and passion), remember that this may be your own prophetic moment: it may well take you the rest of your life to come to an appreciation of what you’re experiencing right here and now.

If you’re still standing on the shore of the Sea of Reeds, feeling the chariots of Pharaoh and his army pressing down on you, or, if you’re still in shock and awe from witnessing the suffering and death of your Hope, I say to you: be patient. Find acceptance, and trust that there is, indeed, Someone beyond yourself who holds your destiny safe and sacred for you. This is your Passover from slavery to freedom, from death to life. Know that, however difficult it may seem at the moment, ahead of you lies your destiny. Hold on to it passionately!

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

When They Stop Listening

Les Brown — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 13:00:23 +0000

Earlier today, a friend told me (and I don’t know for certain whether or not he’s correct) that the Greeks have a saying for when a young couple has their first wall-shaking shout-fest. The bemused neighbors comment, “They’re learning to love each other.” It’s the rare couple (none that I know of) who has never raised their voices at each other. I will say this, though: if a couple is ever going to do verbal battle, it’s going to be at midlife. Healthy couples never stop “learning to love each other.” For those that do stop, they eventually discover that they’ve grown apart, seem to have little left in common, and it’s the perfect time for one of them to drop the “love bomb” — you know the one: “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”

Must couples in trouble necessarily fail? No, not necessarily: no healthy couple is doomed to failure. In fact, the only ‘doomed’ relationships are those where one or both partners are unapologetically physically or emotionally abusive . Without a doubt, the only realistic option for someone who finds her- or himself in a fundamentally abusive or exploitative relationship is to exit immediately. Apart from that, I believe that many (if not all) relationships “on the rocks” could be healed under the right circumstances. From my perspective, the fact that this healing so often fails to take place could be an indication that one or both of the partners have stopped listening. Additionally, ceasing to listen indicates a spiritual problem. Let me explain.

It would seem that the person who hears another’s voice, but is no longer committed to listening to what the other has to say has given up on her or his partner, as well as their relationship together. If you look more closely, however, it soon becomes clear that the person has actually given up on him- or herself. Empathetic listening and appreciative inquiry represent a three-fold choice: 1) to accept the other, 2) to trust the other, and 3) to engage with the other. Closing off the lines of communication also represents a choice: to cease accepting, trusting and engaging with one’s partner. Before I relate this to fundamental spiritual principles, let’s look briefly at each choice.

The choice to accept another human being is foundational. True acceptance represents a fundamental option to see in the other person another self, with exactly the same sorts of strengths and weaknesses that we ourselves possess. This choice to acknowledge the other person as another self has two destructive opposites. The first perversion of acceptance we call ‘exploitation‘. Philosopher Martin Buber contrasts these approaches with the terms I-Thou (for true acceptance of the other), and I-It (for exploitation). To see your partner merely in terms of his or her usefulness (like a tool or a piece of furniture) or her or his capacity to satisfy you represents a fundamental denial of humanity on your part. The second perversion of the choice to accept your partner shows itself as conditional acceptance. In brief, “I’ll accept you if you do such-and-such or so-and-so.” Conditional acceptance of another puts you in the position of being their judge, jury and executioner. In fact, it represents nothing less than your attempt to usurp the position in your partner’s life properly held by God alone.

Next, let’s look at the choice not to trust your partner. Why don’t you trust her or him? Because you’ve been hurt before? The refusal to trust your partner goes way beyond self-preservation. Once again, it is passing a judgment of condemnation on another person — another self — who exhibits the same sorts of faults and failings that you yourself exhibit. In fact, if the truth were known, the faults and failings that you find most easy to condemn and most difficult to forgive in others are the very ones that you exhibit most strongly yourself. In fact, the two keys that are absolutely essential to unlocking both acceptance and trust are these: first, to acknowledge an identical humanity in both yourself and the other, and, second, to commit yourself to the path of unconditional forgiveness. Who cannot look at the plight of even the most desperate of people around us and not be able truthfully to say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I?” The greatest message of Christianity — and also, I’m afraid, its most forgotten and neglected — is simply this: unconditional, unlimited forgiveness. If you cannot forgive unconditionally, you cannot trust for very long.

The final choice is the choice to engage with your partner. If you refuse to engage with her or him, you thereby give credence to the (Jungian) ego’s false belief that you are vulnerable and need protection. It’s the same force that drives people’s frantic searching for that illusive (and illusory) ‘security’ that they believe will fix everything and protect them from danger. Once again, it would be foolish to put ourselves in harm’s way by engaging with an abusive partner. We owe it to ourselves and to them to take the necessary precautions so as not to allow ourselves to become victims of deliberate abuse. However, if you imagine that refusing to engage with your well-intentioned partner will grant you some sort of immunity from harm and from hurt, you are mistaken. Do you believe that spiritually you are invulnerable and that nothing outside of yourself — not even death — can destroy the essence of you? “Greater love has no one,” we have heard, “than to lay down his life for another.” Oddly, dieing for someone can actually be a whole lot easier than living for them.

Finally, what does the choice not to listen say about that person’s spiritual condition? The testimony it gives is nothing short of damning. Personally, I would liken it to what Christians refer to as the ‘sin against the Holy Spirit’ or the ‘unforgivable sin.’ Here’s what I mean. Whenever I write, I use the terms ‘acceptance,’ ‘trust’ and ‘engagement’ as synonyms for what are called the ‘theological virtues’, namely: faith, hope , and love. The ‘sin’ against faith is the decision not to accept the will of God exactly as we encounter it in our world. The ‘sin’ against hope is the choice not to trust that our only Source of genuine security is divine providence. The ‘sin’ against love is the refusal to become meaningfully engaged with those we were sent to serve: our fellow creatures who, along with us, share the “image and likeness of God.” If the ‘sin against the Holy Spirit’ is a refusal to believe that the love of God is powerful enough to forgive us (and so we refuse to ask for forgiveness, and therefore refuse to accept it), then turning a deaf ear to someone we once claimed to love is a ‘sin against love’, for, as we know, the opposite of love is not hate, but deliberate indifference.

What can you do if you find yourself failing to listen? Remember the futility of protecting yourself. What can you protect yourself from? Even more importantly, what are you protecting yourself for? After all, your mission here in this world is not to try (futilely) to keep yourself safe. It’s to share with your fellows (and especially those in relationship with you) the same kind of acceptance, trust, and engagement that your God has shown to you. God hears his people’s cry . . . can you do any less?

And what about you who find yourself ‘learning to love one another’ and your words keep falling on deaf ears? You, too, have the opportunity to pass on the love of God. Your acceptance of the other can be renewed continually. Your trust of the other need never fail or fade. You may stand ever at the ready to engage. However, engagement (love) requires reciprocity. God does not condemn, so how could you? God does not constrain, either (because love can never be forced), but rather waits for all eternity for the other to emerge from his or her isolation and re-engage. You can have the willingness to re-engage, whether or not the other ever seeks it. You may never re-engage as you once did: time and the world goes on while the other chooses to isolate, stagnate, or (what’s worse) repeat the same self-defeating choices and behaviors with other partners. You, on the other hand, have the opportunity to accept and trust and engage with people at every stage and every condition of your life: people who, like you, have chosen to listen not only with their ears, but with their hearts.

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

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Begin with the End in Mind

Les Brown — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:05:35 +0000

I want to begin my article series for 2010 with the seemingly incongruous topic of ‘death’ for a number of very good reasons, the first of which would be having experienced the unexpected death of a favorite aunt only a few days ago on New Year’s eve. We certainly had not planned on ringing in a new decade with the rituals of mourning. However, life’s vagrancies pay no attention to our expectations. Not ever. Yet, as a culture, we seem to be obsessed with the denial of death. We’ve even changed our language so that we don’t even have to use the word ‘death.’ Nobody dies anymore; they just ‘pass away.’ After all, isn’t ‘death’ such a morbid subject? We wouldn’t want to be accused of having a morbid fascination, would we? So, our culture attempts to expunge death from our lives by hiding it under platitudes and insulating us from it as much as possible by hiding (or hiding from) the evidence.

Obviously, the middle ages were infused with what we would consider a ‘morbid fascination’ with death. Yet, they had good reason. Back then, there was no hiding from the end of life. Infant mortality was rampant. Life was short (the average age at death was 40 or less). Disease swept Europe in waves that killed millions. Families encountered death ‘up close and personal’ on a disturbingly regular basis. Death, back then, was certainly an unavoidable ‘fact of life.’ Indeed, the experience of death and dying was so pervasive that it was completely taken for granted, like eating and sleeping. People needed to be reminded of what it meant: “Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris” (“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” from the Ash Wednesday service). Even Thomas Moore, Lord Chancellor of England under king Henry VIII adopted a famous motto: “Memento Mori” which is a Latin pun meaning both ‘remember death’ and ‘remember Moore.’ We would not want to return to the fixation on death that characterized the medieval period. Yet, what have we replaced it with?

Rather than focus on our ultimate destiny, leaving this world behind, our culture has chosen to replace a morbid fascination with death with a morbid fascination with rigidity and changelessness. Our obsession with youth and nostalgia for an imagined halcyon age in times gone by permeates not only our decision-making processes, but also the meaning we give to the world. ‘Living in the moment’ seems to have become ‘living for the moment.’ Haven’t our lives been overtaken by an obsessive pursuit of security? How much thought, time, and resources have you devoted in the past year alone to achieving security for yourself and your family? Even the term ‘conservative’ has shifted from meaning a forward-looking, thoughtful decision-making process to meaning a kind of reflexive instinct for self-preservation. Yet no real security can ever be attained.

Sometimes the discipline of philosophy can bring sense to a worldview that appears confusing and contradictory. Medieval writers spoke of everything having a ‘final cause.’ That meant for them that things happen with an inner logic that drives them forward (whether or not we are aware of what that logic might be). If the universe had a beginning (and it did: the ‘big bang’), then it has a direction and an inner logic that drives its evolution toward some future, as yet unknown, ending. The universe is not static. It’s not rigid. It’s not eternal and changeless. The only constant in the universe is change. Although its inner logic drives it forward, the universe’s unfolding is anything but ‘secure.’ All we know for certain is that, at some point, the earth will be swallowed up by the sun, the sun will become a super-nova and die, our galaxy will collide with others and be ripped apart, and the forces of the entire universe will eventually play themselves out. Time and space as we know it will just cease.

The life that each of us enjoys can be understood as a microcosmic reflection of the universe itself. For us, as for the universe, there is no security, no stability, no guarantees. We grow and our lives play themselves out by an inner logic over which we have only limited influence. We call that inner logic our ‘destiny’ — that complex of possibilities that work together with our understanding and our decision-making powers to determine who and what we shall become. We absolutely must look backward to appreciate where we’ve come from. However, in life, there’s no room for sentimental nostalgia. We can’t — we shouldn’t want to — turn back the clock. At midlife, youth has gone; good riddance! Enlightened by the past, our decision-making power must be focused rather on achieving our destiny whatever that may be. Our choices need to be forward-looking, enlightened by our ultimate end, our ‘final cause,’ our purpose for being here. Looking forward gives meaning and direction to our lives; obsessing on the past can only leave our lives frustrated, empty and meaningless.

Now how do we put this understanding into practice? One of Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits is, “Begin with the end in mind.” How will you know if you’ve made the right decisions if you have no idea where you’re going? As the Cheshire Cat told Alice, “If you don’t know where you’re going, then any path will take you there.” As you begin this new year, do you know where you’re going? Do you have a clear mission for your life? Defined values? A vision for the next 12 months? A written intention statement that defines specifically what you want to accomplish? If you knew that death awaited you a year from now, how much differently would you live today? Death overtook our aunt while the rest of us were making plans for the New Year. Every time something like that happens, it’s a wake-up call that reminds us with stark finality of our own end. Most of those who read this will end this year with a greater or lesser degree of success (however you choose to define that). Yet, some of you may not. Eventually, each of us will come to a year without a New Year’s eve. Should we not begin this one with the end in mind? Indeed, “Memento Mori.”

Life Is Change (Stagnation Equals Death)

Les Brown — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:16:19 +0000

We humans have a morbid fascination with security. What’s this all about? As you look more closely at how we define ‘security’ for ourselves, you can begin to learn what it is you really mean when you say that you’re working to provide a secure future for your family. Doesn’t it mean that you have sufficient income (for now and for the future) not just to provide you and your family with the necessities of life, but also both to maintain your lifestyle at its current level, but also to provide the other members of your family with those benefits you want them to have (like advanced schooling)?

Doesn’t it mean having a stable family life? How about having access to the kinds of health care and preventive programs that will best promote the health and well-being of you and your family members? Shall I continue? Doesn’t ‘security’ imply not only freedom from crime and attacks, but also the freedom to pursue your favorite sports, hobbies, and pastimes? In short, doesn’t ‘security’ imply to you maintaining at least the quality of life to which you’ve become (or wish to become) accustomed?

Then, along comes midlife, and what happens? It seems (often quite rightly) that your security is being blown all to hell and from the inside out. Your career is threatened, your family is threatened, your health is threatened, everything gets put ‘on the line’ in a landslide of insecurity that catches you off-guard and without a stable foothold to hang on to. When midlife threatens to strip everything away, what’s left? The answer to that questions depends entirely on you, but, whatever it may be, that core of ‘self’ that remains when all else seems to be dissolving around you is where you find your spiritual center. If you can muster sufficient humility to allow the midlife transition to expose the core of your being, there you’ll find all the clues that you need to your identity as a person, your purpose in life, and your destiny.

I need to remind you of the caveat I always mention whenever I talk of that rather dangerous term, ‘destiny.’ People tend to think of ‘destiny’ as a predetermined path along which you’re given no choices but to fulfill. That approach to destiny distorts its meaning so as to make it not only unpalatable, but almost frightening. If you have no choice, then why try? On the contrary; your destiny only begins with your DNA. You’re not born with infinite possibilities: your possibilities are limited (at least) by your genetic makeup from the instant you begin to exist. Every moment thereafter, those possibilities continue to be shaped, pruned and honed until you come down to the person who looks back at you from the mirror every morning. Your destiny has been shaped by your environment, your experiences, and every choice that you’ve ever made.

Choice — that comes down to only two: to choose to work with your destiny as you experience it today, or to work against it. It means accepting the person you are today (and therefore the person you will be tomorrow) or rejecting it. I very much like the characterization of that choice in these terms: you either choose your destiny, or choose your fate. What’s most important for you to appreciate is that your destiny does not represent a static future: it’s totally dynamic, shifting and evolving with every new experience and every single decision that you make (big or small). You’re building your bridge to the future as you walk on it.

Returning to my original point, I want to challenge you to take another look at ‘security’. Once you accept that your destiny is a dynamic concept, you’ll soon recognize that any definition of ‘security’ that makes it a static point in time or a changeless goal distorts it. Rather than being a state, true security is a condition of preparedness (like strength and agility) that allows you to discern the ‘signs of the times’ and take proactive measures that will promote your (and your family’s) well-being. No matter how clear your vision of the future may seem, it will never adequately encompass everything that you’re going to encounter between now and then. The future that you will experience may have very little in common with your imagining of it. Because it’s dynamic, it’s also unpredictable.

They say that the only two certainties are death and taxes. That may be true; but, what most concerns me is that so many people going into midlife seem to want a life that’s not only certain, but static. In my estimation, that means ‘dead.’ What good is a life — a destiny — a spirituality — that’s essentially dead? Midlife happens upon you as that time in your adult life when you’re invited to give up the dreams of ‘happily ever after’ and to accept the challenge of putting your hand to life’s tiller and steering your course for the rest of your life though the ever-shifting winds and tides that surround you. Midlife is also that time when you come to accept that tomorrow may bring changes that today never anticipated. In midlife, at last, you come face-to-face with life, not as a dream but as a challenge: one for which you can now learn to be eternally grateful.