Midlife Mastery Journal

Living Life on Life's Terms

On last night's internet radio program, I interviewed rock musician and author, Steve Mayfield, about his new album and book, Afterlife Crisis. One of the principle themes (that became a song on his album) was that, even when we've gotten through the midlife transition, we still can't find a "Resting Place" — somewhere or somehow to put down the stresses of life and catch our breaths.

In my opinion, that's probably the greatest disappointment of midlife and beyond: that the promised rest ('retirement') doesn't materialize anymore. Steve is from the Chicago area, and he shared with me that most of the people whom he knew were still working at the same corporations (some of them in the same jobs) that they'd had for thirty or more years. That has not been his experience (he was downsized twice), yet he was somewhat surprised to hear that almost no one whom I know from the midlife-and-beyond group has escaped a career change after age 50. Perhaps it's a bi-coastal phenomenon that's only now reaching Middle America. However, the point needs to be made that it is, in fact, reaching Middle America now.

The Scariest Hallowe'en Ever

Saturday was the first (and the biggest) costume party of the Halloween season around here. I went as the scariest thing I could think of: the New York Stock Exchange. Sadly, I didn't win the 'Scariest Costume' prize . . . I lost out to a store-bought devil. I'm not sure whether this particular devil was scarier because he was a product of the world economy (probably manufactured in China) or because he was a biblically-inspired manifestation of 'creatures from the id' (as in the 1956 sci-fi/horror film, Forbidden Planet). Either way, as a student of human nature, I found it fascinating that people would be more frightened of a manifestation of their own subconscious mythology than of the reality of losing their financial security for the foreseeable future. As Alice was wont to exclaim: "Curiouser and curiouser!"

The more I've been able to delve into the deeper regions of the midlife transition to find the motivator that supplies all the necessary psychic energy to power midlife crises in both women and men, I keep coming up with the same inexhaustible and eternally-renewable energy source: fear. Because this primordial fear of losing out (. . . on what? on life? . . . ), most people would rather deal with fantasy horror, like slasher movies and the scare-yourself-silly Stephen King genre than get down there where the real threats to your relationships, your career, and your personal health and well-being lie.

The Other Side of the Mountain

Just because I've made it "over the hill" doesn't necessarily mean that it's smooth sailing from now on. As a matter of fact, think back to when you were a teenager still walking riding your bike everywhere you wanted to go. Couldn't you just taste the freedom and all the possibilities that were waiting for you when you reached those magic ages: 16, 18, 21? And, of course, you weren't disappointed, were you? All that freedom and all those possibilities were really there for you, weren't they? But, along with them came sets of duties, obligations and responsibilities. You may have been aware of some of them beforehand, but, until you made the transition from dreaming about the opportunities that awaited you to actually living them, you didn't quite appreciate how big a deal they were, did you?

The situation has a lot of similarities to the way it appears when you make the transition through midlife into maturity. However (and this is a big difference), most people secretly dread having to get older. Yet, perhaps, when people read my articles or attend one of my teleseminars, they may begin to have the realization that the midlife transition starts a new and improved chapter in their lives: one where they've been released from their bondage to other people's expectations, and they experience (perhaps for the first time) the freedom to follow the urgings of their own spirits and live the life defined by their own personal destinies. If it sounds too good to be true, it's not — it's very real. However, that doesn't mean that there isn't another 'side of the mountain' as the song suggests.

Living a Life of Regret

Emily Dickinson wrote, "Remorse is cureless, the disease not even God can heal." 'Remorse' arises as a sorrow for past decisions that you've made, while 'regret' serves as a broader, more useful term, describing a wish that you'd made other choices in the past: choices either to avoid doing something that you've done or to do something that you avoided. At their root, the two emotions are practically synonymous. They're both cases of feeling sad because of choices that you made once upon a time.

As the disappointments that characterize the midlife transition slowly strip away the feelings of achievement, success and personal adequacy that used to keep you going as a mere adult, oftentimes what remains — like grounds stuck to the bottom of a drained coffee mug — are all your regrets: "I wish I hadn't done that;" "I wish I hadn't said that to him/her;" "If only I'd listened to him/her;" "I shouldn't have passed up that opportunity." Regret, exposed by present disappointments, leaves you pining over a lifetime of unfortunate detours and roads not taken. No wonder the midlife transition feels so depressing!

Finding Peace with Yourself

I do spend some time with what I call the 'Education Section' of the Washington Post every morning. Everyone else may refer to it as the 'Style Section', but to me it'll always be the 'Education Section.' That's where I get my daily dose of wisdom from the comics (don't be mistaken: they're not, and never were, meant for children), where I get a daily infusion of advice from 'Ask Amy,' from 'Miss Manners,' and from Carolyn Hax, and where, on occasion, I spend time with my current addiction: the Sudoku puzzle. No matter how I'm feeling when I drag myself out of bed and down the stairs, my good ol' Education Section always make me feel better. After all, these advice columnists so often agree with me!

This morning, Carolyn Hax was talking about one of my favorite subjects (and one that's critically important in the world of Midlife Mastery), peace with oneself. Here's what she has to say on the subject today:

It really just means you have as objective a view of yourself as possible, and you're okay with it, the good and the bad. Think of it as a two-part process — self-awareness first, followed by self-acceptance — though it's also on-going, as you edit yourself along the way.

I Can't Get No . . . Satisfaction

The three emotional characteristics that most clearly define a man in midlife are 'restless', 'irritable' and 'discontent'. No wonder they 'can't get no satisfaction'! There's quite a significant difference between the ways that men and women deal with this bucket of emotional pain: women generally tend to experience it and want to work through it, preferably with people they can trust on an emotional — or even better yet: a spiritual — level. Guys (almost regardless of their professions of spirituality) generally want to avoid facing it. Their approach can be characterized as denial, the place that, as they say, is not the river in Egypt.

In a recent article ("Sounding the Emotional Depths"), I talked about the four levels of emotion that people (both men and women) experience during the midlife transition: they feel — from the outside in — 'glad', 'sad', 'mad' and 'scared'. The guys in denial only want to feel 'glad'. If they were to acknowledge that those other three, much more uncomfortable, emotions were underlying their superficial OK-ness, they'd be afraid that they'd have actually to feel these things. And, of course, they'd be right. As a result, most males tend to behave exactly the opposite from what's natural for most females. I guess we shouldn't be surprised at that, should we?

Sorry, Guys — Time's Up!

You know what they say: "Time and tide wait for no man." And, you know, they're right. Time's up, guys! Tide's gone out, and there's not enough water left to float your boat. For the past four months, I've been focusing my energies on addressing the single most critical time in a person's life — the midlife transition — from the point of view of that half of our population that has the greatest difficulty making that transition successfully and with a minimum of crisis and collateral damage. Many times, I've written that one of the core processes that take place during this transition directly affects guy's belief systems, assumptions, and expectations.

It's time to remind both you and me of the fact that the processes in question aren't temporary; they come into their own during the midlife transition (when the denial systems that prevent their going forward start to give way). Yet, as life processes, they continue on for the rest or your life, at the same time burrowing ever deeper toward the core of your personhood and also confronting new (but inadequate) belief systems, assumptions and expectations that come up along the way. Not only do you get flushed out of your hiding place during the midlife transitions, but every new one that you find or create gets targeted for demolition as well.

Sounding the Emotional Depths

We know one thing for certain regarding midlife: it's an emotional maelstrom. The principal difference between your reactions to the emotions that you experience during the midlife transition and the ones you endured during puberty lies in the fact that you're so much more adept at finding creative ways to stuff, deny, and project your feelings away from yourself so that you won't have either to show with them or deal with them . . . at least for now.

What do you think that midlife feels like? I suspect that most people going through this experience would say, "Confusing." Yet, any first-year psych major would be able to tell you that 'confusion' isn't a feeling. Feelings, when boiled down to their basic essences, come in only about four flavors: 'mad,' 'sad,' 'glad,' and 'scared.' The confusion comes from an inability (or unwillingness) to get down and dirty and really identify the feelings that are churning around down there. It's often the case that, on one hand, you do recognize how you feel, but, on the other hand, your intellect tells you, "That can't be true! I can't be feeling that way!" As a result, your mind and your emotions end up at war with each other. It's not pretty.

Detecting the Deadly Detour

Just a couple of days ago, our family interred my uncle at Arlington National Cemetery will full military honors. He was an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel who once served in the Pentagon under Robert McNamara during the Kennedy-Johnson administrations. He was quite a brilliant and accomplished man. As a pilot in the Army-Air Force attached to Gen. Montgomery in North Africa, he won the Distinguished Flying Cross, one of the highest medals of honor awarded to pilots for heroism in flight.

One of the reasons for his extraordinary promotion from enlisted man to Lieutenant Colonel was his remarkable attention to detail. He had an insatiable thirst for knowledge, particularly technical knowledge. He firmly believed that there wasn't anything he couldn't do.

I remember many years ago when a young wild bird was injured flying into their glass sliders, he took the bird inside and nursed it to health. Not only that, but he researched, and kept detailed records of the bird's diet and feeding. He began by purchasing meal worms from a local pet supplier to feed the bird, and wound up turning his family rec room into a home-grown meal worm factory to care for the bird.

This wasn't at all unusual for my uncle: whether it was researching family genealogy, repairing a broken dishwasher or installing an HVAC system from scratch, the methodology was always the same. It was all about the research, the development of specialized skills, and detailed documentation of everything he did. His life should have been a model for unqualified success; unfortunately, it was not.

Why Men Get Lost in the Clouds

Just before we moved from Connecticut to Delaware (where we now live), I was only about a month away from earning my instrument rating on my private pilot's license. From everything I've heard, the instrument rating is the most difficult rating for a private pilot to achieve. If I were to characterize the course content for the instrument rating in two words, I'd have to say "precision navigation" is the key.

When you're first practicing for instrument flight . . . particularly shooting an instrument approach to an airport, you're flying with your instructor using either a 'hood' or 'foggles': wearable devices that restrict your vision so that you can't see outside the cockpit of your aircraft. It simulates the zero-visibility conditions that you'd encounter in real instrument flight. Only toward the end of your extensive training period will your instructor take you up into real instrument conditions (the likelihood of experiencing debilitating spacial disorientation is rather high for a novice — like in the fatal situation experienced by John Kennedy, Jr. some years ago). I have to tell you, though, that there are few experiences more gratifying than, for the first time, breaking out of a true cloud cover and seeing the end of your runway appear directly in front of you perfectly aligned for landing.