Midlife Mastery Journal » interdependence

Paving a Road to Hell

Les Brown — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 13:00:00 +0000

“Paving a road to hell.” Strong words, aren’t they? As a theologian, I think I have sufficient qualifications to speak to that subject, though. Furthermore, midlife emerges as that period of a person’s life where he or she can be most prone to create that painful pathway. No doubt, you’ve often heard the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I think that more often than not, however, the road to hell is paved with cowardice. People — good people — of various religious persuasions have allowed themselves to be seduced by the graphical images with which our Judeo-Christian (and even Muslim) cultures have provided us in an attempt to illustrate the pains of hell. What emerges from taking these images literally is a laughable caricature of the truth that all of these traditions are struggling to convey.

The fundamental essence of hell lies in an absolute isolation. In their attempt to transform the lives of criminals, the Quakers who designed the original penitentiary system (a place where wrong-doers could do penance and thereby reform) envisioned them as places where men and women would spend time in solitude and contemplation. Instead the total isolation that these people experience frequently drove them mad. We humans are at the core social beings; even infants deprived of social contact (and touch) will die. The hell that we create for ourselves and upon which the descriptions of perdition are based is a state of utter aloneness. Some have said, “If I’m going to hell, I’ll have a lot of good company.” On the contrary: in hell there would be no “good company” . . . in fact, there would be no company at all!

Why am I bringing up what are essentially philosophical and theological speculations in an article about midlife? Whether hell as a state in the afterlife exists or not is surely debatable. What’s not open to question, however, is that people can too easily create for themselves a hell on earth by succumbing to their fears — particularly their subconscious fears. I think that’s the reason why Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Hell begins when we allow ourselves to be victimized by our subconscious fears and where it ends, well . . . who knows? How hard is it, after all to look deeply at yourself in the mirror? Whom do you see there? Do you register a shock every time you see yourself as you really are, rather than that self you imagine yourself to be as you face the world? For most people reading this today, you’re not 20 years old anymore. The reality of aging is there for everyone (but you) to ponder whenever they see you. How does that make you feel?

If you’re holding on to that image you have of the 20-year-old (and who isn’t), what are you holding on to, and why? From conception until death (and, I’m convinced, beyond), our human existence, mirroring the evolution of the universe itself, is characterized by one factor: growth. We can (and often do) stop or stunt our growth, but we can never reverse it. 168 hours of opportunity pass by us every week, regardless of how we choose to use or waste it. In this universe, at least, time seems to move inexorably forward. As we grow, however, we experience two fundamental flows of energy: at times we acquire; at other times, we relinquish. It’s the ebb and flow of every life that bouys up our growth experience like the tides. Youth is designed for acquisition: allowing us to gain whatever we need to sustain and foster our life energies as we grow. Aging, on the other hand, is marked by relinquishment. The principle lesson of the whole of life consists of learning to let go.

Midlife — at whatever age it may come — represents a tipping point in your growth: the point where acquisition steps back and allows relinquishment to take center stage. This is the way life has to be, because acquisition serves as the support to growth, not its destiny. Our true destiny as human beings consists in transitioning into mature spiritual beings. All of our youth, all of our acquisitions, even our physical existence itself serves only to support and enable that process to progress. Our culture has it all wrong, but Robert Browning got it remarkably right in his poem, Rabbi Ben Ezra, when he wrote:

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith ‘A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!’

I highly recommend that you read the poem in its entirety, because it makes my point abundantly clear. Carrie Pierce, who was guest on my internet radio program recently talked about our culture’s worship of youth. That made me wonder. I’m starting to believe that it’s not so much a ‘worship’ as an idolatry: replacing the essential with the peripheral out of fear.You see, in order for someone to be able to set aside the peripheral and embrace the essential, he or she must give up, once and for all, the illusion (and delusion) of self-sufficiency.

It’s not until we humans reach the point where our best-laid plans have failed, where all the security we have so carefully amassed has proven useless, when all our striving to maintain our physical strength and beauty turned to vanity under the glare of bright lights or the challenge of a long and steep flight of stairs, when all those personal flaws that we’ve so carefully hidden from the world appear for all to see, that we begin to acknowledge the truth about ourselves: our true destiny lies within and in relationship with others. Paradise (now and hereafter) lies in our interdependence. An old (and favorite) saying of mine goes like this: Heaven would be hell for a godless person. The world’s greatest prayer is composed of four letters: ‘help!’ Isn’t it our own cowardice (our fear of admitting our dependency) that keeps us from uttering that prayer? Cowardice that prompts us to keep up appearances so that the outside gives the lie to what’s really happening within? If it’s our secrets that keep us sick, then isn’t cowardice the disease?

And, the road to hell — living forever alone — is paved, not with good intentions, but with self-reliance.

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC

Copyright © 2009 H. Les Brown

Xenophobia and You

Les Brown — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:57:32 +0000

"Xenophobe: A person unduly fearful or contemptuous of that which is foreign, especially of strangers or foreign peoples" [Wikipedia]. Regardless of where you fall personal on the spectrum of political opinion, you have to be at least a little awestruck at the recent US presidential election. There's a reason why there's been such an outpouring of public jubilation: as a country, we've just punched through another critical cultural barrier that for generations has kept our country from achieving its highest aspirations. I can't stress strongly enough how significant this process of tearing down cultural biases in public and private is for a person or a people to gain access to a life of significance.

In other articles, I've written about how damaging the cultural biases toward extreme individualism and ruthless competition have been to the male psyche, putting serious roadblocks in the way of self-examination, self-expression, and essential network-building so that midlife for many males becomes literally an overwhelming crisis, rather than the path to full maturity that it should be. To overcome this debilitating isolation, men need also to overcome their life-long cultural biases. Today, I want to add this third cultural bias — uncertainty avoidance — to the other two. As a matter of fact, I believe that this cultural bias, that afflicts peoples as well as individuals, must be overcome in order for a person (or a nation) to attain maturity.

The cultural phenomenon called 'uncertainty avoidance' (see Geert Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations) depends on how strongly one agrees with the statement, "What's different is dangerous." With the current election, the majority of voters in the US, at long last, has publicly repudiated that paranoia. I can only hope that this will make it only that much easier for those of us who are entering the midlife transition to do the same. I've also commented in previous articles that fear lies at the core of every midlife crisis. Exactly what the dimensions of this fear may be depends entirely on the physical, mental, psychological, cultural and spiritual makeup of the individual. The more profound the perceived change may be, the more difficult it will be for a person to transcend this 'other = different = dangerous' reaction, and, consequently, the more difficult will be his or her transition into maturity.

Who are the men and women who have successfully completed the transition from adulthood to maturity through the midlife passage? They are men and women who either possess an innate sensitivity and openness to others (and therefore can interact cooperatively with others without fear or anger), or, they are people who have passed through a personal 'trial by fire' where their arrogant self-reliance has been tested and found wanting, leaving them in a state of humble interdependence. In short, life has taught them the difficult lesson that it's often necessary to ask for (and accept) help, and accept reliance on others as an important precondition for any kind of meaningful growth or progress.

What lesson can you take away from this experience? Only this: that the difficulty you'll experience with the midlife transition (and the consequent probability of having to experience midlife crises) increases in direct proportion to how fearful you are of the 'other:' that is, people who don't look like you, or talk like you, or think or believe like you, or behave like you. The more xenophobic you are, the more difficult that your midlife transition will be because, after all, change always means leaving the old and embracing the new: losing something to gain something else; allowing the old to pass away so that something different can be born.

Whether you experience that transition in terms of fear or excitement — whether your focus is on what you may be leaving behind or what you're about to gain — will determine, to a great extent, the ease and, ultimately, the success of your transition. The majority of the voting public in the US made their decision known last night. How your decision plays itself out in your midlife transition may yet to be seen. Either way, the forward thrust of acceptance, trust and engagement will always overcome the backwards drag of fear.