The coming of midlife, when life’s pathways begin to diverge seriously from the map we’ve so carefully crafted for ourselves, brings with it the equivalent of an ‘engraved invitation’ to indulge ourselves in a virtual orgy of self-doubt. At these times of reflection, we’re tempted to look at all the personal resources that we’ve expended over the years to live up to expectations — from others (parents, teachers, spiritual and civic leaders, ‘gurus’ of various flavors, elders, mentors, friends, etc.) as well as from our own egos — and to question most seriously what it was all for. Over the years, haven’t I repeatedly just wasted my money, my blood, sweat, and tears, and, most precious of all to me, my time? Poet Robert Frost wrote about the ‘road not taken,’ but, at midlife we start to think back more frequently concerning the ‘road once taken, but abandoned.’ Was it worth it? Not so much. Is there an answer?

You betcha! By this time, as a Midlife Master, you must have realized that your perspective on life and love is not just your point of view: how you look at life, the universe, and everything actually creates the reality in which you live and move and have your being. When it all fails to make sense, it’s not the reality that needs adjusting; it’s your perspective on it.

I was in a meeting yesterday where a brilliantly insightful member shared how everything in her life served to prepare her for what came next, and, in addition, the skills and understanding she gained through careful adherence to the detailed policies and procedures she was ‘force’ to follow won her the freedom to innovate later on when she was no longer constrained (or no longer chose to be constrained) by external authorities or personal or institutional demands. I thought that her reflections on the topic were so incisive that I told her after the meeting that I was going to write about it. This aspect of midlife affects everyone who passes through it, in one way or another.

Take our experience with religion, for example. For years, in the ministry and long after, I’ve heard people complain about how mistreated they were by the religious institution they were brought up in, or how religious institutions deal unlovingly with their own members or with outsiders. I’ve listened to more than my share of tirades against the ‘institutional church.’ In each case, the indignant speaker cites personal or public anecdotes to demonstrate why s/he feels victimized by the institution and, in many cases, why those events should serve as evidence not only for the hypocrisy of religion in general, but also for the non-existence of God. This argument has spawned a plethora of folks who take great pride in proclaiming to whomever may be listening that they are ‘spiritual but not religious’ people. In their estimation,’religion’ represents a blight of ignorance on humanity rather than what its definition intends it to be: the summons to mindfulness.

Yet, ironically, it’s that very mindfulness that I find lacking in their arguments. There are many purposes for religious institutions, among which are the preservation and safeguarding of human spiritual experience (through Tradition with a capital ‘T’ as enshrined in Scriptures with a capital ‘S’) and the tutelage of each successive generation of novice believers (through institutional discipline as enshrined in its rules and regulations). Without those services to humanity, our common spiritual experience through which Higher Power communicates with humankind would be lost forever, and each generation would have to begin from square one learning the language of the divine.

At the same time, those who complain about how they were mistreated by religious institutions may not realize that, as people who insist on considering themselves victims, they have failed to grasp the very lessons that those religious institutions are in place to teach: namely, that no one can take advantage of you without your permission. Life is full of injustice; from earliest childhood to the indignities of old age, everyone at some time suffers pain of some sort at the hands of others. That is not the lesson that life teaches. That is simply a fact of life, like birth and death.

The lesson that life teaches concerns how we deal with the pain we encounter. Wallowing in blame and resentment only cements our status as victims. Yet, we are not victims unless we choose to be so! All tutelage — especially that offered by religious institutions — provides us with the platform from which we can learn how to transcend other-focused blame and resentment and gain independence and mature self-possession. Without spiritual tutelage (lessons in meditation and discipline), spiritual maturity would be impossible.

Nothing that you have experienced in life has gone to waste. Every element, every experience, every moment you’ve spent in travail has provided you with an opportunity — an invitation — to growth. Every moment you’ve lived and every person you’ve loved and every thought you’ve thought and every breath you’ve breathed has become a part of the person you are today. Some of those experiences have provided you with the raw materials you needed to grow both strong and wise. Other experiences (particularly those you’re allowing to haunt you as resentments) await the moment when you’ll assimilate them, too, into your growth process. Each one of them came to you as a gift that you need right now to become the person that you were destined to be. Whether or not you actually become that person is your choice: at any given moment, you have the choice either to resent the teacher or to be grateful for the lesson. So then, what’ll it be?

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

“Why are you doing this to me” emerges as the heart-rending cry of a woman or man who’s just had the stilts knocked out from under him or her and it’s the lament of the person suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of injustice. We have heard this lament (or similar cries) for as long as we humans have been encountering adversity. Here’s a passage from the prophet Isaiah (6:11-12):

Then I said, “Lord, how long?” And He answered,
“Until cities are devastated and without inhabitant,
Houses are without people
And the land is utterly desolate,
The LORD has removed men far away,
And the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.”

We might consider this age-old lament — first thought and then spoken — to be the “opening theme,” so to speak, for the entrance into the midlife transition. “Why are you doing this to me?” is the sound an adult makes when her or his world has been upended. To understand this, we need to remember the characteristics of adulthood. Once we have become an adult, we assume our independence and personal authority. Not only are we emancipated from parental controls, we also emerge from parental protection. The burden of providing for our own security is transferred onto our own shoulders and, to a great extent, we are judged (and we judge ourselves) on how successfully we’re able to provide for ourselves (and, eventually, for our families).

Adulthood provides us with some preliminary answers to life’s greatest questions: Am I good enough? Am I smart enough? Am I capable? Am I lovable? Am I respectable? Am I honorable? Am I the woman or man whom my parents, my spouse, my children, my community can be proud of? Do I measure up to expectations? Adulthood defines success as receiving a resounding “Yes!” to all of these questions. For the adult, even kindness and generosity will be motivated and judged by what we imagine others are expecting of us, which, unsurprisingly, is most often identical to what we are expecting of ourselves. This is how the adult defines self-esteem, and this is precisely why, when one of those ‘but bombs’ hits an adult, it can be so devastating. “Why are you doing this to me?” means, in effect, “Why are you deliberately sabotaging everything that I’ve been trying to accomplish?”

Welcome to the midlife transition! Here’s your opportunity to leave the misconceptions of adulthood behind, and to step out into the clear light of maturity. All of the misconceptions of adulthood — that your value as a person is based on how well you perform and how effective you are at achieving a reasonable level of security — are based on one fundamentally flawed concept: that it’s all about you. How successful you are at making the midlife transition depends almost entirely on how effective you are at ridding yourself of that one erroneous concept. No, it’s not all about you, and it never was. ‘Success’ can never be achieved through living up to anyone’s expectations . . . even God’s!*

So long as we’re stuck in the ‘me-centered’ universe of adulthood, challenges and adversity will continue to appear to us to be focused on us (because that’s where our unconscious focus lies, and that’s the perspective from which we view everything that happens around us). As I mentioned before, “Why are you doing this to me?” is the cry of the ‘innocent victim.’ You may, possibly, be ‘innocent’ (although in the majority of cases, you have very probably been guilty at least of neglect and/or misprioritization), but you are not a victim. Keep this in mind: nobody can make you a victim without your permission. Victimhood represents the childish ‘it’s all about me’ attitude taken to its logical conclusion: I’m the cause of everything that happens.

What if you’re not all that important? What if it’s not “all about you”? What if the challenges that you’re facing in life (including all the ‘but bombs’) are simply examples of the collateral damage that occurs naturally as the universe struggles to sort itself out in its evolution? There’s the paradigm shift — the evolution in perspective — that differentiates mere ‘adults’ from those who are spiritually mature: stuff happens. Very often you may become implicated in that stuff that happens, and you have to deal with it, even though it’s not about you. The longer you live, the more stuff you’ll encounter: you’re going to lose every job you hold; every relationship that you value is going to break up; your health will be compromised; you will die. Nobody — God included — is ‘doing this stuff to you.’ It’s just life, and, with birth, you’ve bought your ticket and you’re on the ride.

Once you’ve attained this shift in perspective that so characterizes the midlife transformation, your whole approach to life and love will change. You will no longer be so preoccupied with your acquisitions and your accomplishments, and you will increasingly dedicate yourself to discovering and carrying out with integrity the purpose for which you’ve been given this amazing gift of life. Happily, the mature woman or man realizes that his or her life’s ‘purpose’ is always evolving, always ‘in process’ and, therefore, always in constant need of rediscovery, reinterpretation and redefinition. Regardless of the challenges you may face, you can receive each one as it really is: just another opportunity to grow, to evolve, and to deepen your connection with and reliance on the Ground of your being, that Power greater than yourself, the One who sent you here.

God, I offer myself to Thee, to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt.
Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will.
Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help
of Thy power, Thy love and Thy way of life.
May I do Thy will always.
Amen.

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

______
“God’s expectations” of us refers, of course, to our understanding of those expectations. God’s real expectations of us only reveal themselves gradually over time. Much of what we think are God’s expectations are merely our assumptions based on what we’ve been taught or projections of our expectations of ourselves.

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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Nobody’s immune from landing in hot water from time to time, especially at midlife. The question is never whether or not you’re going to be in hot water (you will), but what you’re going to do when you get there. You will do something! There’s a fabricated story going around about putting a frog in a pot of water on the stove and ever so gradually increasing the temperature of the water. The story pretends that the frog won’t notice the gradual increase until its too late and it’ll boil to death. That’s not what happens: when the frog gets too uncomfortable, it’ll jump out of the water (just as you would). When things get too uncomfortable, you will act; what you need to ask yourself is: what will you do?

The ‘carrot’ option and the ‘egg’ option are really just two varieties of the same choice: you can play the victim and pretend that adversity has gotten the best of you. It’s not that adversity doesn’t change us — it does — but it’s a matter of how we are changed. All adversity presents us with an opportunity to grow. Even Nietzsche said, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” He said, “. . . makes us stronger” not makes us harder. So long as we’re pushing the envelope, there’s no such thing as ‘failure.’ We learn by our mistakes. We discover more about ourselves when situations call on us to produce more than we think we can. None of this casts us in the role of ‘victim.’ That happens only when we give up and take a defeatist attitude, saying to ourselves: “I’ll never make it,” “I’ll never love again,” “I can’t do it,” or “I quit.” Remember what Henry Ford is quoted as saying: “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.”

Your deepest strength lies in your capacity to transform your situation, regardless of what it may be. Compare those whom you’re aware of who have received a death sentence and who have nonetheless deeply touched those around them by their integrity and courage (like Farrah Fawcett, for example) with those who have received the same news and have taken that opportunity to drag those who loved and cared for them down with them. I think we’ve all known of such people.

That reminds me of the change of heart that Elizabeth Kübler-Ross had as she studied the dying. At first, she thought that there was no difference between those who believed in a Higher Power and those that didn’t. It seemed to make no difference in how much difficulty they had getting to acceptance. Deeper investigation, however, showed a clear difference, once Kübler-Ross realized that claiming belief and having faith were entirely different matters. Those with an active spirituality were much less likely to see themselves as victims, and they were much more likely not only to reach acceptance more quickly but also to exert a transformative influence on their situations and on those around them.

I’ve said all along that the midlife transition is essentially a spiritual one. It’s a transition from being externally-focused to becoming interiorly-focused. ‘Maturity’ in this perspective means shifting your focus from the superficial to the essential in your life. With that shift comes the inner capacity to transform your outer environment. It derives from a growing conviction in your heart that you are invulnerable: that even death itself cannot defeat you.

I challenge you to look at the difficulties you face right now at midlife: troubles in your relationships, troubles with your career and finances, troubles in your health and well-being. Now, rather than trying to ‘fix’ them, why not ask yourself on a daily (or even an hourly) basis, “What can I do with the knowledge and experience that I’m gaining through this?” What can you do now that you couldn’t do yesterday? What new paths and opportunities have opened up along your way? What stranger will you meet today — that Angel in disguise — who, when you welcome him or her, will grace you in unexpected ways? Even in the midst of the noise of fighting or the crying and screaming that may be surrounding you, what’s God’s “still small voice” telling you in your heart of hearts that you haven’t heard before now? Life: it’s ‘good to the last drop!’

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC

Copyright © 2009 H. Les Brown

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If you're one of those no-nonsense people who's hard-working and minding your own business, doing everything you're supposed to be doing right now, chances are you're laying the foundation for a doozie. When you wake up one day with your career in a shambles, your family shattered and your health a wreck, at least you'll be able to say, "I worked for it, I owe it to myself, and nobody is going to deprive me of it."

Remember how, in Dickens' Christmas Carol, Jacob Marley showed old Scrooge the links in the chain that he carried that so weighed him down? He told his old business partner how he had forged each link by his own hand, one at a time. And you? What kind of a chain are you forging. On one of the sites where I publish my articles, a critic complained that my thoughts were meaningless double-talk and unrelated to real-world issues like getting yourself hired. I have to admit that he's right: it is meaningless double-talk until you come face to face with your own personal, individual crisis; then you find yourself at a loss as where you are, how you got there, and how in God's name you'll ever get out.

Do I sound a bit irritated? I am. I was just talking with a fellow on a major business network who told me, "The kind of information you're offering is the kind of important information that people need the most. Unfortunately, they're just not interested in it." He's right. People want down-to-earth, meat-and-potatoes, take-it-to-the-bank sorts of information. They want to know 'how to': how to prep for the job interview, how to get their spouses to do what they want them to do, how to do more of what they want to do in less time with fewer bad side effects. Yup! We got a pill for that!

God forbid that we should ask whether that job's right for you. How many years are you going to burn up doing something you hate that leads you nowhere? And, while you're at it, that family that 'you've gotta support' with that soul-killing job cops an attitude a mile wide because you've basically abandoned them, becoming emotionally unavailable. Of course, they're the bad guys in all this because, after all, they're not even grateful to you for breaking your back in a job you hate just 'for them'? And speaking of that back of yours, how well are you handling the extra weight?

Think about it: who's responsible for the mess you're in right now? (Don't tell me it's not a mess . . . I know better!) Maybe you should sit right down and write out a list of all the people who have treated you unfairly and who got you (and keep you) in your current state. Don't forget the government and those criminals on Wall Street. Once you've completed your list (how long is it?), you might want to go back and dream up some fitting punishments for each one of them. What would you like to do to them? When you're all done, here's what I suggest: that you tear up your list and get rid of it. It's crap. There's only one name that should be on that list and that's your own. You're not a victim, you never were, and all the drama in the world that you could create around the people you blame for your own decisions isn't going to deflect that responsibility one bit from where it belongs: on you.

If nothing changes, man, nothing changes! If you've let yourself get caught in a forest of problems and you never make the effort to climb a tree to see where you are, is it any wonder you find yourself going around in circles? You're stuck in a game of your own invention! You don't need more schemes and tactics to get you more of what you already have. What you need are new strategies that can provide you not only with a way out, but with a plan. Build your crisis brick by brick and decision by decision for as long as you want. But when you're finally sick and tired of being sick and tired, come talk to me.

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC

Copyright © 2009 H. Les Brown

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