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Midlife crises
by Jean Lee Patindol
Last summer, over dinner and drinks with now Philippines
Today writers with whom I shared college experiences as school
paper writers, and while catching up on each other’s
lives, a comment was made by one member, of how come that
now, in our thirties, everything seems to be falling apart
at the same time that we are trying to strike out in entirely
new directions: a career achiever wants to settle down, a
banker wants to go adventure-racing, a homemaker wants out
of her marriage, a dynamo is seeking a quieter, more predictable
provincial life.
Always the meaning-maker of the group, I volunteered a conjecture,
“Maybe we are simply questioning the choices we made
in our twenties, now that we feel more competent and confident
about ourselves as individuals, and reevaluating the lives
and lifestyles we have made so far based on twenties’
criteria and values.”
This proposition is not entirely without basis. It comes
from personal observation, and an intense reading of Gail
Sheehy’s Passages (Bantam: New York, 1976) when I was
seventeen (!), and trying to understand my own parents’
midlife crises and marriage breakdown, which made me understand
grown-ups better, and anticipate my own challenges of growing
into adulthood more serenely.
Basically, Sheehy’s thesis is that there are predictable
crises of adult life and it is not the one long plateau of
Adulthood we so commonly think about. As there are developmental
challenges in childhood and adolescence that one must successfully
overcome to become a mature adult, so are there developmental
challenges of adulthood that one must successfully hurdle
to become an integrated, whole and fulfilled adult.
Essentially these are the life stages and challenges involved:
1. The Trying Twenties—trying out
a life and lifestyle that supports our vision of ourselves
and the kind of life that we think and feel we ought to have:
“Buoyed by powerful illusions and belief in the power
of the will, we commonly insist in our twenties that what
we have chosen is our one true course in life.” However,
the choices we make in our twenties are usually centrally
influenced by the values and choices of other people—our
parents, school, friends and social circles, the media and
other generational influences.
2. Catch-30—feeling restricted from
the choices made in one’s twenties, with new aspects
of one’s self emerging and demanding to be taken into
account; important new choices must be made, and commitments
altered or deepened. “The work involves great change,
turmoil, and often crises—a simultaneous feeling of
rock bottom and the urge to bust out”. I would suspect
that the stirrings one feels in one’s early thirties
are already the first nudgings of our soon-to-be “midlife
crises”, so we have to pay attention to them and not
ignore nor escape them by burying our selves in more of the
same. lifestyle, work, social activities that we have built
around our selves since our twenties;
3. The Deadline Decade—commonly called
the stage of the midlife crisis and ranging anywhere from
age 35 to 45, there is the realization that even as we reach
our prime, time is running out. Questions like, “Why
am I doing all this?” and “What do I really believe
in?” crop up more often and more insistently. The challenge
is to work through finding our own true values, questioning
how they fit into our current life systems, and reworking
our life systems to reflect more of our own internal values.
The challenge is to stand on our own two feet, at last.
4. Renewal or Resignation—some time
after the mid-forties, a sort of equilibrium is achieved.
Whether the equilibrium is the kind brought about by passive
resignation to “the fates” and trying to live
out the rest of one’s life stuck into the life systems
one feels unable to get out of, or the equilibirium is borne
out of the inner satisfaction and peace from having wrestled
with one’s demons in one’s thirties or forties,
there is some level of stability accomplished, after the turmoils
and upheavals of prior decades.
All told, the changes and challenges that one has to contend
with as one steps into adulthood to become the mature, fulfilled
and integrated true adult one has to become basically boils
down to choosing how one wants to live out one’s life—based
on what other people say our life should be led, or based
on what we truly believe how our lives should be led. Sadly,
though, most of us seem to so easily give in to the first
option, preferring to have “ready-made answers”
and lifestyles set out for us, rather than engage the challenge
and process of facing our darkest selves and finding our deepest
answers, and mustering the courage to finally be true to our
selves.
The funny thing is, there is really ultimately no choice.
At each crisis, we are called to either progression or regression.
And even if we choose to temporarily regress and hide in the
comfort zones of our predictable life systems, a crisis will
crop up time and again to call us out of our cocoons and nudge
or push us further to the only option there is if we are to
continue to live and not just exist: growth, maturation and
authenticity.
So, break down, or break through? That is the question.
For comments and suggestions, email
the author at grace_with_fire@yahoo.com.
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