Midlife Mastery Journal

The Well-Spring of Hope

Midlife doesn't just come upon you all of a sudden and without warning like a roaring avalanche. Instead, it creeps up on you gradually and quietly. In 1986, carbon dioxide gas, bubbling up from Lake Nyos, West of Cameroon, softly and silently killed more than 1700 people and livestock within a 25km radius. Most of those affected had no idea what had overcome them. Although you'll probably not experience those kinds of dire consequences at the onset of your midlife transition (it would probably not rob you of your life), you can, nonetheless, be robbed of much that you value and much that makes your life worthwhile.

As you progress more and more deeply into your midlife transition, if you haven't prepared yourself physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually for what's coming, you may find yourself plunging almost imperceptibly deeper into a sort of life-draining depression. You can almost feel your joy ebbing away, as those experiences that used to thrill and delight you now feel boring and silly. You may feel like some of your favorite pastimes are no longer worth the effort. For many men, even their sex lives become — dare I say it? — boring. How does it feel to be sinking ever deeper into a dull, gray sameness with no clear indication of a direction you could take that would improve your sorry state? It's a feeling not unfamiliar to many in the midlife transition: hopelessness. Is it any wonder that so many people try to break out?

The Only Way to Win the Battle of the Sexes

Here's a double spoiler for you, first for the 1983 movie, War Games, then for this article: as the computer, Joshua, comments at the end of this picture: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." It works as well for global thermonuclear war as it does for the age-old conflict between estrogen and testosterone. The masculine and the feminine are meant to be complementary — yin and yang — two essential dimensions of the whole. Yet, throughout human history, that complementarity has been distorted into a kind of warfare where the spoils become nothing less than human dignity itself.

The stakes are especially high as 21st Century men and women encounter the midlife transition. As you might expect, the effects of midlife on men and women couldn't be more different. Most men have been so severely acculturated that they believe (not with their rational minds, but in their gut) that feminine characteristics (gentleness, accommodation, cooperation, social intercourse, emotional acumen, self-knowledge, etc.) are not only diametrically opposed to their masculinity; these things are actually considered to be destructive to it. In contrast, many women have adopted the belief that, unless they adopt the masculine characteristics of aggressivity and emotional impassivity, they can't be capable managers or entrepreneurs. They (as well as their male counterparts) often interpret their femininity as a professional liability.

Distracted by Life

Wow! It's been a long time (almost a week) since I've been able to write about all things midlife! Sometimes, events conspire to take your attention off the duties of the day-to-day world and force you to focus on what's more pressing and immediate. That's one of the great stressors of life: midlife or adult life, and even child life. I've been distracted by a return to another parallel program I'm involved in, called The Frazzled Entrepreneur and, ironically, it's nudged me over the line into what I call 'frazzled focus' where important issues have become urgent. There are serious consequences for non-performance, and those consequences are imminent. Also, as often happens in these sorts of situations, once you're thrown into frazzled focus, the precipitating causes suddenly seem to evaporate, leaving you up in the air, half-finished, with an urgency that's passed. Is it best to leave things half-finished to go back to your routine, or does it serve you better to complete the project at hand, only to put it up on the shelf? For people like me (high Myers-Briggs 'P'), it's very dangerous to leave things half-done: I never seem to make the time to get back to them.

What does getting distracted from my daily routine have to do with the challenges of the midlife transition? Isn't it just a fact of life even during your (more-or-less) 'stable' periods? Yes; only at midlife the possibility of falling into frazzled focus becomes, not only a more likely occurrence, but one with more consequences as well. As you progress into the midlife transition, and your life as you experience it becomes increasingly less satisfying (for all the dozens of reasons I've been talking about in many of my articles), you experience the need to make changes — sometimes major changes — that can thrust you quickly and easily into frazzled focus, because these changes recommend themselves as an answer to the pain of the present moment. Pursue a promising extra-marital relationship. Consider telling your boss where to put your job. Give your pastimes an importance and urgency above and beyond everything else. Presto! You're in frazzled focus.

Are You a Midlife Entrepreneur?

Here's to a new beginning. You're off to a fresh start. You have new hope, new prospects, new horizons, a new vision. Your life is half over, you're dissatisfied with what you've accomplished, and here's your chance to get moving. No time like the present, you say. You look at what your boss does; you see so much wasted time; you know that you know more about your product than he does; you see what he's doing wrong, but you wouldn't dare tell him. There's got to be a better way to do all this, hasn't there? Here's a thought . . . why don't you organize your little corner of this business (that you know so well and have so much experience doing) and strike out on your own. There's got to be a lot of people out there who would pay you (a whole lot more than you're currently getting) to do what you do best for them. What's more, you'd get to keep all the profits, rather than have so many other people take advantage of the proceeds from your work. Besides, you're feeling trapped: trapped at work; trapped at home; so trapped that even your time isn't your own. Here's your chance!

Taking your show on the road — particularly at midlife — very often seems to be a really excellent choice. My own father did it in 1955 (at age 49); I did it, too (at age 38). There are a few folks who start their own businesses in college (or even in high school). Even more of us start businesses after 'retirement' or after being laid off. When you look around us, most (actually, almost all) of the entrepreneurs you see are in their 40's or later. Are you aware of all the forces that are dragging at you as you struggle with these 'What's next?' decisions? Being on the verge of taking that giant step into the entrepreneurial unknown can be a really scary place to be, and for good reason: you're about to walk that tightrope between business success and failure without a net. What's more, you're about to volunteer to be that net for other people: your spouse, your family, your customers, and anybody you may in the future hire. You're about to paint a target on your forehead, and invite the world to take a shot at it. Just hope that William Tell doesn't show up with his bow and arrow!

The Mystique of the New

The year has changed . . . how about you? What changes are facing you in 2009? If you're a man in midlife, change has probably caught you like the incoming tide and is carrying you along with its often-understated power. Now, the question remains: what are you going to do about it? Your midlife experience may be causing you to experience your relationships, your career, and your own personality with restlessness, irritability, and discontent. Not surprisingly, you may be reaching the limits of your tolerance for those aspects of your life that are out of focus or discordant. Perhaps you're feeling cheated, as though you've been promised a bill of goods that were never really delivered. You look back at your decisions, and can't figure out where you went wrong . . . exactly where your path turned and headed you off into a direction where you never really wanted to go. Maybe you're thinking (especially now that everyone's talking about a tough new year ahead of us) that it's time to make a change.

Guys: here's were you'll need to be very, very careful. My generation (the 'boomers) are rapidly moving in to take the place of the depression generation as retirees and 'golden agers.' Most of you who will be reading this will be a generation or two behind me. That makes you many decades behind the folks who experienced years of joblessness, scarcity of food, and having to make do with (and for) the necessities of life. Theirs was the generation who learned (from bitter experience) about conserving and reusing whatever little was available to keep them and their families going. They experienced what 'luxury' really means (according to the vast majority of the world's population). They look aghast at our 'disposable planet' mentality. In our 'mentality of abundance' world, the 'poverty mentality' can find few adherents. When in doubt, we proclaim, throw it out and get a new one!