Midlife Mastery Journal

The Second Hallmark of Maturity

Have you completed the midlife transition from adulthood to maturity? It's really quite easy to judge: there are two major hallmarks or characteristics that set maturity apart from mere adulthood. We've already said quite a bit about he first hallmark, which involves replacing the 'borrowed' values, goals, aspirations, and expectations of adulthood (inherited from family, peers, teachers, religious and political leaders, the media and culture) with personally-significant core values that are generally independent from outside influences, opinions and judgments. Maturity replaces the phrase 'supposed to' with 'choose to.'

However, this is only the first hallmark of maturity. The second hallmark is almost a corollary of the first, although it doesn't always follow upon it. Once we make the decision to adopt a core value system that resonates with the person who we are (or discern that we are meant to be), we have the option to choose the goals toward which we are going to strive. The hallmark of a mature person who has successfully completed the midlife transition appears as a set of goals that are concerned more with giving back than getting. An adult is someone who has achieved a certain amount of independence and is pursuing goals that foster and promote that independence and personal well-being. The mature person is one whose energies are focused on forwarding the prosperity and well-being of his or her family, community, nation, culture, and humanity as a whole. Midlife transition moves a person from enlightened self-interest to making a lasting contribution to human progress. I don't think that we consider this seriously enough as a sign of the midlife transition.

When You Care Enough to Put It On The Line

Some people think that heroics are best left to the young. After all, haven't we heard — haven't we said — "I'm too old for that"? Yet, in fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. Youth may be the time for idealism, but maturity is the time when standing up for your values really means something. I remember when we were kids, we used to play "Bang, bang! You're dead!" And, after a short while, we'd come running over to our 'victim,' pat the 'hurt' place and say "Fix, fix! You're all better!" At midlife, we get to see all too clearly what "You're dead!" really means, and how seldom "You're all better!" really works. The deeper we pass through the midlife transition, the more conscious we become of the cost of standing up for what we believe in.

Am I saying that younger people are unaware of the cost of heroism? No. It's just that, on one hand, we have learned to become skeptical of the ROI for our commitment — we've lost faith in the 'quick fix' — and on the other hand, we come to realize that there are many false values that aren't at all worth fighting for. It takes a certain length of experience and a lot of missteps before we can discern what's worth standing up for from what's not with any clarity at all.

My reflections today are inspired by my guest this week on my internet radio program, Midlife Matters. He's Eric Proffitt, a singer and song-writer who's married and the father of five daughters. He's also just completed a 500-mile run in heavy chains from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC to the tomb of anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce in London, England to draw attention to and raise money to counteract worldwide child sex slavery. Eric has truly put it all on the line, not only for his own values, but for the sake of others who have no voice or power. And, I believe, therein lies the hallmark of mature values worth living and dieing for.

Confronting Change -- Opportunity or Opposition?

We here in the United States are witnessing a very strange — but at the same time very human — reaction to changes in the way our citizens pay for their health care. People are fighting fiercely (some would say irrationally so) for their point of view to win out. It's no secret which side of the debate I stand on: I'm all for change. What I'm observing, though, is that those who are fighting the most fiercely as those who are opposed to the change. It's a perfect example of systems theory at work, which says, "A system faced with change will resist it, even fiercely, in order to maintain the status quo even when the change is for the benefit of the organization." That's why I say that what we're experiencing in this country seems so strange: attempts to fix a system that's admittedly broken, unfair, and resulting in needless deaths are met with unbridled fury.

What does this have to do with the midlife transition? I think it offers us a powerful lesson. If we're going to be successful at navigating the many life-altering transitions that we have to face at midlife, we're going to have to be prepared to be fierce about it. As in all things worth doing, "Half measures avail us nothing." We are facing . . . and we're going to continue facing . . . serious changes as we continue to evolve from child through adolescent through adult and finally to maturity. Changes confront us . . . and will continue to confront us . . . in each of the three principle circles of influence: our families, our careers, and our own health and well-being. Many of these changes are . . . and will continue to be . . . radical and upsetting. In every case, we're forced to confront these changes fiercely, or allow them to overwhelm us. How our lives play themselves out — as success or as failure — will depend to a great extent on whether we choose to confront these changes as opportunities for growth or in opposition to our own stubborn wills. Either way, our battle for survival will be fierce (or none at all). How can we turn the ferocity of our determination into an evolutionary transformation that will result in our becoming stronger, more committed and more powerful people than ever before?

The Heartbreak of Midlife Addiction

One of the most obvious signs of the onset of midlife is the appearance of those dreaded signs of physical aging. It seems to start with the hair: graying hair, hair loss, and/or hair growing profusely where it never grew before. Then there's the midriff bulges that go both laterally and fore-and-aft. There are many other unmistakable signs, like wrinkling and splotching of the skin, and so on. All these things tend to appear long before we feel the effects of the hormonal changes (menopause and andropause) that we associate with midlife. Therefore, the first signs of midlife attack us where we're most sensitive: in our self-image — our sense of health and well-being. When you start hearing yourself saying things like, "I've got to watch my weight" or "I really need to get more exercise" or (even worse) your doctor starts saying those things to you, the guessing stops: you're at midlife!

What do you do? If you're like many people, you begin watching your diet and getting involved in an exercise regimen, because you want to hang on to the appearance of youth for as long as possible. Doesn't that sound terrifically healthy? On the surface, that seems to be not only the obvious, but also the best choice, when, in fact, that could be the start of a downward spiral that very often ends up not only damaging your health and robbing you of your sense of well-being, but could also destroy your career and tear apart your family. Am I exaggerating? Not in the least! Nobody sets out to ruin his or her life; that outcome only results from a steady stream of small, seemingly insignificant poor choices that eventually lead to a bad end. We call this an error cascade: when a series of small, almost unnoticeable missteps conclude in catastrophic results. For the person entering the midlife transition, it most often begins with the mistaken belief that he or she is 'going downhill' and that somehow the process is reversible. How this one seemingly innocuous idea can lead to heartbreak represents the rest of this story, and 'getting' the moral of this story all depends on understanding the nature of addictive behavior.