My roadmap to midlife

I remember, one morning, waking up after I had my third child and screaming. There were three kids on my bed and it dawned on me that they were all mine. My midlife crisis may have officially started then but there were rumblings of it the moment I had left a permanent job and decided to go island hopping.

With no clear idea of where I was going and what I was going to do, my journey into midlife began. Lucky for me, my mate was quite willing to hop on and off planes for a few years in my second quest for identity. I thought that during my adolescent years I had clearly marked a spot for myself in this universe but I soon realised that “Midlife is when you reach the top of the ladder and find that it was against the wrong wall.” Is midlife a midwife waiting wordlessly with a knife while I gnash and gnaw in pain? For some “life begins at forty,” but my colleague Simone said “life begins to end at forty.” Well, for me it both began and ended. It ended because I had to find new things that would have meaning for me, so there goes the old self, and it began because I now begin to create the new me.

This is not an easy task; ask anyone between the ages of 35 to 55 as I did to some of my co-workers. Dominic gave me a list of things midlifers are concerned about, such as health, namely menopause and male impotency; security in marriage and family life; financial growth and retirement plans; job satisfaction and the need perhaps for a change in career; the search for religion or spiritual meaning and the list goes on. Francis was ranting and raving about how he was going to bring up his two young girls in a crime filled world with violence in schools the new modus operandi. And while Harry is always looking to win a lotto to a life of instant retirement, Darrel only said “Midlife crisis? I going through that right now!” It’s comforting to know that I’m not the only one, but it doesn’t ease the pain of trying to get the inches off my waistline or stop the greys from appearing on the sides of my hair. Furthermore, having children in your mid-thirties-thanks to modern lifestyle and late childbearing is not going to help that bumpy ride through those middle years. Let me warn you, I’m going to get  technical for a little while but I’m not panicking.

Writer, Gail Sheehy in her book New Passages writes about midlife being a “second adulthood.” She says that “We all have a second chance at becoming the person we are meant to be” and she sees that journey as one in dangerous territory, where successful transition into the next stage of life is not guaranteed. TS Eliot puts it this way “We had the experience but missed the meaning.” A lot of people run the risk of regression or stagnation by avoiding that trip into individuation and wholeness. You can deny midlife crisis, but you can’t escape it — you can run but you can’t hide — and one writer recommends a roadmap to midlife just as the Americans have a roadmap to peace. Basically it says, know the terrain, understand the destination and have a goal in mind. For my roadmap I like to go to the Orientals in my movement towards nirvana, starting with the Yin and Yang. Yin and Yang energies in the Tao symbol consists of a circle divided into two equal portions, each containing an element of the other, indicating that all of creation is composed of two energies, masculine and feminine, held in harmony and interaction. Hence, by midlife you need to know what energies were undeveloped and begin developing them if you are to become a fully functioning person. In most cases men must come to terms with emotions, vulnerability and needs, while women become more decision and action oriented. Gail Sheehy in Passages calls it the “switch forties.”

The rewards of switching roles are great, in that, the positive anima in males is seen in his patience, tenderness, consideration and compassion and the positive animus in females is portrayed in assertiveness, control, thoughtful rationality and compassionate strength. Of course, there is always the “shadow” which is our unlived life. Carl Jung sees the shadow as the dark and unknown aspects of our personality. Thomas Moore in The Care of the Soul states, “The person we choose to be... automatically creates a dark double —the person we choose not to be.” Robert Louis Stevenson portrays it nicely in the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I like to think of the shadow as the minotaurs in the labyrinth or to put it simply, the demons which plague my existence. For me, there are two ways to deal with them, either slay them or make friends with them whenever they pop up, just like a good teenaged video game. Together with the Yin and Yang and the Shadow in my roadmap to midlife crisis is the Persona. Carl Jung writes “the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.” Therefore, the persona refers to that aspect of the ego that we present to the world for its approval, like a mask that we can hide behind. What then is our true identity? This is the million-dollar question of the midlifers.

In theory, if we examine the three items on the roadmap we are supposed to find the “gold” that writer Robert Johnson relates to as our higher calling. He refers to it as the gold that needs to be mined and integrated if the individuation process is to proceed. In practise, this midlife quest resembles the labour a woman undergoes before the umbilical cord is cut by the experienced midwife or the male stress of being husband, father and breadwinner before he deals with these issues. Yet, the best part is to come, now that the old age of youth is over, the youth of old age has stepped in. So you don’t jump as high, skip as fast and you’re breathing hard once you climb a flight of stairs, but chances are if you design and follow a roadmap, something new and exciting might emerge. You may not feel so old again. As for me, I would just like to sleep a couple hours longer on mornings, have someone take the kids out on public holidays and sometimes on Sundays and find some more interesting food to eat. Or maybe, I might just get up one morning and decide to visit another continent.
Whatever it is, midlife is anything but dull.