Midlife Mastery Journal » discouragement

As Your Worldview Turns

Les Brown — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:13:55 +0000

Yesterday was the Sunday after Christmas, and it was 50° F and bright sunshine here in Rehoboth Beach, so we drove down to Gordon’s Pond Park Seashore to take a walk on the pristine beach. The surf was high and came crashing in on the shore. Out on the water, it looked like there was a long line of white-capped waves being tossed up by the steady wind blowing from the northeast. Suddenly, the line of ‘whitecaps’ rose up into the air in a gray mass of fluttering wings: a cloud of thousands of seagulls hovering over the water for a few minutes, then slowly settling back down into a streak of white flotsam gently riding the swelling waves.

Just before Christmas, I had stumbled upon the archives from Craig’s friend and performance poet, Chasen Gaver, who had died of AIDS in 1989. In those archives were listed audio tapes of conversations that the two of them had recorded many years ago. Seeing the list of familiar tapes and documents now part of a university library collection really affected Craig. He mused, as we walked along the water’s edge, about how strange it was to be confronted by the person he had been back then, when life was new and full of possibilities and ideas were exciting and heavy with promise. Now, he said, he felt as though his life was in ‘maintenance mode.’ It made me think: this is the shift of perspective that sets maturity apart from mere adulthood. It’s a tough change of perspective to navigate successfully.

Can you remember the thoughts and feelings . . . the dreams . . . that you held so dear when you first emerged into adulthood? So much was new! There was the first time you decided that you had found your partner in life. There was your first foray into politics. Your first career. Your first trip abroad. I’m certain that you can think of many, many more ‘firsts,’ each one seeming to open up new vistas, new possibilities, new promises. Life, for adults, appears like an endless series of adventures. Remember “Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it”? All the while that your storehouse of experiences grew more complete, your ideals were tested by time and adversity, your tastes became solidified, your hopes and desires tempered by disappointments.

The final transition between adulthood and maturity happens when reality forces you to acknowledge that your own hard-won experience has let you down. You look around at all that you’ve accomplished and built for yourself and suddenly you see it for the first time as emotionally and spiritually unsatisfying. You hunger for more, but everything that you’ve experienced and everything that you’ve learned tells you that ‘more’ promises only more of the same. The midlife awakening can be summed up in one sad phrase: “Is that all there is?”

Beneath the surface of your conscious thought, you’re experiencing a transformation. ‘Hope’ is robbed of the meaning that it once had for you. What’s there to hope for when you’re left trying simply to maintain yourself in a reasonable semblance of well-being until you die? What’s the point? Believe it or not, this is the turning-point of the midlife transformation. This is where you’re given the opportunity to create a solid foundation of maturity that goes beyond anything that you could have experienced in your adult life thus far. Leaving behind the ‘hope’ of the child waiting breathlessly for Christmas morning (mere anticipation) actually represents a major step forward toward living a fulfilling life. For the mature person, ‘hope’ comes to mean the kind of trust that sinks down into your very bones that, in the words of the Desiderata, “No doubt, the universe is unfolding as it should.” And that universe encompasses you.

The meaning that you find in your life no longer needs to be dependent on your accomplishments from yesterday. They helped to make you the person who you are, but now they are faded and stale. Regardless of how exalted your position, by now someone somewhere has bested you. Few accomplishments remain notable for very long. Nor can you expect to discover the meaning of your life in those things that you are yet to accomplish. By now, you’re way too cognizant of your limitations to imagine that you’ll be changing the world any time soon. What’s left? Ah! There’s the gift that you’re being given to ease you into maturity! What you discover that you have left is all you really ever had: today.

We’re looking at the immanent close of this year and our entry into the teens of this new century. Of course, we do well to look at where we’ve been this past year and where we hope to go in the one that begins anew in a couple of days. This could be a time for a radically new approach to living, if you want it to be. You have the choice of turning away from the regrets and recriminations that kept you stuck in the past and letting go of the fruitless habit of making ‘resolutions’ for the new year, as though you could by sheer act of will change what’s coming tomorrow.

There are but three decisions (call them ‘resolutions’ if you wish) that are worth making for this New Year (and every one thereafter): 1) to lay aside and detach yourself from every expectation that you may entertain about yourself or others for the coming year, 2) to deepen your personal contact with your Higher Power (however you may define that Power) Who supports and sustains you through every moment of your life, and 3) to live fully just for today in conscious awareness that you are an integral part of the divine plan and to do what you can to bring that sense of purpose to those around you who languish without it.

Every year at this time, I am reminded that my first coach, Lyn Christian, discouraged me from making New Year’s resolutions, and, instead, encouraged me to adopt a theme for the new year. Here is my theme for 2010: “Be the hope you wish to experience.” What will your theme be? E-mail your theme for 2010 to me at lbrown@proactivation.com, and I will share it with my readers. A happy and blessed New Year to you all!

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2009 H. Les Brown

Reverse Your Downward Spiral

Les Brown — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 13:00:00 +0000

As I write this, 2008 is nearly over . . . only a few days are left and then: out with the old, in with the new. Of course, this 'old' and 'new' stuff is all just our invention, as is the arbitrary point in time when we mark the change of the year (by the time we hit the stroke of 12:00 PM on New Year's Eve, our planet will already be ten days into its next full cycle around the sun). For as long as humans have been around, we've been marking the changes of seasons and years, pretending that we're a part of a never-ending cycle of birth, growth, flowering, decline and death. So once again, we get ready to meet another New Year's Day and another new beginning and start the cycle all over again. Only, when we think this way, we're being more than slightly delusional. You see, regardless of how it seems, there are no cycles in our universe. When we see cycles, it's only because we're taking a two-dimensional view of our three-dimensional world.

The universe is expanding, our orbit around the sun is subtly shifting, our moon is creeping ever farther away from us as the forces of gravity act as a brake, slowing it down. The universe is not cyclical, but evolving: it's moving in a direction, from somewhere (and some-when) toward somewhere. With it, our lives evolve, too. Like old Ebeneezer Scrooge, 'We're not the men we were before.' If we look at our lives from too far above or below, we fail to see our progress, like viewing a spring from one end: it seems like an unbroken circle. It's only when we shift our perspective that we notice that the path of the spring takes it in a spiral, either upward or downward. Likewise, when you see patterns repeat in your life, you may be tempted to see them as repetitions of old lessons long learned but, in fact, they are brand new each time you revisit them because you are a different person and the world is a different place.

I wonder whether people, at this time of year, aren't asking themselves the wrong questions. Our traditions encourage us to make New Year's resolutions over the next few days. Are you asking yourself: 'What do I want to change about myself and my life?' Will that question really bring you the changes you seek? How well have you done with resolutions from the past? Experience with the way you keep (or don't keep) these resolutions should indicate a strong possibility that something just may be wrong with the way you're approaching this. Rather than asking yourself what is it that you need to change, perhaps you'd do yourself more good to ask yourself in what direction your life is headed. Given that you're not going around in circles, then you're either spiraling upward in growth and self-realization, or you're spiraling downward toward dissolution. When was the last time you stepped back to take a good, serious, sober look at all this? And, isn't this a good time to do it again?

Before you do, please allow me to give you a very serious word of caution: don't fall into the trap of self-delusion that can be so powerful an influence, especially during the midlife transition. Let's picture your place on the spiral of live as though you were a person riding a bicycle. Think about your experience of riding a bicycle uphill. If your goal is get to the top of a mountain, and you're riding your mountain bike on the trail, would you expect it to be an easy ride, or a difficult one? Which direction moves you closer to your goal: uphill, or downhill. Which experience builds your strength and endurance: pedaling uphill, or coasting downhill? The same insight works with the spiral path of your life. When your choices are difficult and it takes enormous effort to move ahead, do you think that you're climbing or descending the spiral of life's success? When your forward movement seems unhindered by obstacles or difficulties, do you think you're moving upward, resting on some (temporary) plateau, or drifting downward?

How do you feel when you've turned a corner in your life and there, ahead of you, is . . . another obstacle? Aren't you tempted to give in to discouragement? Don't you sometimes ask yourself, 'Is this all really worth it?' Beware of the times when you're tempted to say 'No!' I support and encourage you to change your life vision when you come to a dead end or when it no longer 'fits' the person whom you have become or the person whom you absolutely need to become. However, I warn you of the danger of changing direction simply because the path you have chosen is hard. Every path that you choose will be hard at some point or other. Those moments represent the greatest growth in your character and your personhood. Those times test the mettle of the love that you profess to have for others. As I often say, pain is not a punishment: it's a wake-up call, indicating that something important is happening in your life. Should you choose to run away from pain, avoid the difficulties that dog your way forward, and turn your life backward into a downward spiral of escapism, you'll learn nothing, accomplish nothing, and court the utter failure that marks the life of the coward.

You don't need to do this. It doesn't take a miracle. It doesn't take an act of God or the intervention of angels or the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. It doesn't take wealth or any special skills or tools. All it takes is a change of heart. Here's a beautiful quotation from Ella Wheeler Wilcox that I recently heard, that fits this situation perfectly:

One ship sails east and another sails west
With the self-same winds that blow.
Tis the set of the sail and not the gale
Which determines the way they go.
As the winds of the sea are the ways of fate
As we voyage along through life,
Tis the act of the soul that determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

So my counsel to you as this year ends is to look, not at what deeds or behaviors that you may want to change, but in what direction the spiral of your life is taking you: upward toward the life's purpose that's continually calling to you, or downward into emotional or spiritual oblivion, heedless of that incessant tugging at your heart to make different choices. Choose your direction wisely. That's your only responsibility. Know that, if you choose to climb toward the loftier goals, your way may not be easy. Yet, that's not your concern. You'll meet and deal with those challenges as they come. Also, know that, should you have yielded to discouragement and chosen the downward spiral, it's never too late: you can change your direction at any time so long as there remains life in you, and even then, all you'll need to do is decide to change direction and take the 'road less traveled by.' As Robert Frost mused, "And that has made all the difference."