Midlife Mastery Journal

. . . The Wisdom to Know the Difference

One of the most difficult virtues to attain is wisdom. Nobody becomes wise through an accident of birth or by osmosis. As has often been said, wisdom derives from good judgment, which, in turn, derives from bad judgment — and an awful lot of it. Jesus told his disciples, "By their fruits you shall know them." Human history is an immense tapestry of good and bad judgment calls, wisdom and folly, all intertwined. "It seemed like a good idea at the time," represents a sad epitaph. Yet, when the smoke has cleared and the results of our decision-making have been revealed, there's no escaping the evidence. Credit default swaps certainly must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but now it'd take quite a stretch of the imagination to pretend that the results were anything short of disastrous.

There's never a shortage of denial among us human beasties. Just when you might imagine that all the evidence is in and irrefutable, someone shows up with his (or her) head in the sand, proclaiming the black is white and up is down. The world sadly experiences no shortage of Holocaust deniers . . . and that's only one example. Yes, wisdom can be very hard to come by and, when you do come by it, it can be very expensive. As a boy, my dad was having a lot of fun feeding paper into a reel lawn mower and watching the blades shred the paper. That is, he had fun until it lopped off the tip of his thumb, giving him a bump (where they reattached it) that he carried with him to the grave. Of course, I was much wiser than he: I was cutting photographic paper into narrow test strips on the paper cutter in my darkroom one day until it lopped off the top of my index finger. Unlike my dad, I'm carrying a flat top finger with me to my grave. As the Pennsylvania Dutch were fond of saying, "We're too soon old and too late smart."

Here Comes Your Crisis!

It really doesn't matter at all how old you are. You can protest all you want about how you're not 'Middle Aged' yet. I don't care what generation you're a part of or not a part of. If you're an adult (at least physically or chronologically) and you're not paying attention to what's coming at you, there's a crisis out there with your name on. Count on it!

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.

Avoiding the 'Drop' One Day at a Time

You may or may not recognize the 'drop,' depending on your age and what are of the country or the world you may be inhabiting. The 'drop' is that cataclysmic moment when the executioner pulls the lever, the trap door flops down, and the condemned plummets earthward . . . to an extent. Many people, particularly during the midlife transition, walk around as though they had a noose around their neck — their career, their relationships, their family, their health — and they're just waiting for the 'drop.' I can tell you this about the midlife transition: it isn't over until you've taken full and complete mastery over yourself and you've aligned yourself with whatever purpose or destiny is yours.

What does that mean in practical terms? It means that the challenge never ends. It means that responding to that challenge implies that the goal is much less important than the journey. In fact, one of the major midlife paradigm shifts between adulthood and maturity involves recognizing that the outcome of any of our decisions is not (and never was) in our hands. Success and failure ('winning' or 'losing') in anyone else's eyes really doesn't matter, and 'salvation' lies in recognizing that it really is all about 'how you play the game' (just like the old saying taught). Here's the way to avoid the 'drop' one day at a time: you can practice the three cardinal virtues: acceptance, trust, and engagement.

Diversions, Distractions, and Drama

I keep asking the same sorts of questions whenever I write: "How's 2009 working out for you?" If you're a 'boomer, you're in or beyond midlife, and what's going on in the world markets today are doubtless having a really negative impact on you, your family, and — evidently — your plans. Chances are extremely good that you never bargained for finding yourself in the row that you've quite suddenly found yourself hoeing. Particularly when bad news lands unexpectedly, the worst possible time of for it to land in would be midlife. At the same time, for any number of reasons that we could discuss at length at another time, midlife presents the largest possible target for bad news of any other period of life. So, unbeknownst to you, while you've been working very hard to set yourself up for a comfortable retirement, diversions, distractions and drama — bad news — has been carefully drawing a bead directly on your best-laid plans.

What were your plans over the last five years? Did it include career advancement? Salary increase? Investment opportunities? Travel? Vacations? Advanced education for you or your children? A new car? A new home? Maybe all of these? If you're like most reasonably affluent people, your future fit into a more-or-less neat equation: hard work + sacrifices + wise choices = security for you and your family. And also, if you're like most people, you woke up one morning to find that those rules that you've been relying on all this time suddenly no longer apply. Don't you hate when that happens?

The Boomer Survival Guide

What an absolutely amazing time to be a 'Boomer! If you're a person who likes a challenge, you'll absolutely love 2009! There's nothing quite like the fear of financial insecurity to stress every system in your life (your career, your relationships and your health) to within an inch of its breaking-point . . . or beyond. We've been told (whether or not we choose to take it seriously) that this year is going to be the toughest in recent history: tougher than last year, with next year shaping up to be not so tough. Meanwhile, wherever you go, there you are, and right now, wherever you go, you're stuck right here in 2009 with all the challenges that entails.

Welcome to 'Midlife Crisis Plus': a life that's taking the concept of 'obstacles to success' to new levels. Sadly enough, you may or may not realize that all you need to do to find yourself inextricably embroiled in this chaos and drama is to do nothing. That's right: sitting back and hoping for the best — many a midlife guy's favorite pastime — opens up a direct route to disappointment and discouragement (if not to disaster). There is a bottom line here, guys: move it or lose it. In other words, you're risking everything when you decide that there's nothing you need to do right now. The first chapter of your 'Boomer's Survival Guide' should be entitled: "Don't Just Sit There, Do Something!"