Midlife crisis or middle passage awakening? You choose……

‘Midlife Crisis’.  As someone sitting in my middle years, I feel there’s something doom ladened about this phrase that doesn’t sit comfortably with me. Is it true that arriving into midlife presents a crisis?  A quick google search informs me that this ‘chirpy’ term was coined by psychoanalyst Elliot Jaques in the 60’s, who had witnessed many clients plagued by self-doubt in their middle years. Maybe, said clients were watching the revolution of the free movement amongst the youth and looking on with such deep discomfort that they went looking for Elliot to calm their pulses. Still, crisis makes it sound so bloody drab. 

Much judgment and blame seem to be apportioned to these years where we approach the middle passage. Us ‘middle passagers’ may want to buy something shiny with our hard-earned cash, or decide to go on a sabbatical to travel the places we have yet to see. We may decide to Feng Shui our lives into something barely recognisable, or heaven forbid, enter a voyage of self-discovery, possibly involving a retreat, some therapy and a hose pipe up our bum. This sounding like a crisis to you? 

It may be that we’ve reached this time in our lives and skilfully avoided any sort of self-reflection (see my blog on pain avoidance to see how the experts, aka me, do it).  If this is the case, I’d imagine the mind’s hard drive might be pretty exhausted and slow running, still replaying all the old beliefs, decisions, slide shows of shame and other crap that may or may not have happened such is our memory’s ability to feed us lies.  I’m guessing this may hold the key to the crisis that Elliot was referring to. So, yes, maybe it is time to clean it all up.  

Blank slate.

The midlife offers the reboot.

Let’s face it.  If you are reading this in your very own ‘middle passage’ you are not twenty anymore.  You are not thirty. You are not that same person. I mean, is it just me but, thank god.

I am a wholly different person to the one I was back then.  I go cold at the thought of getting up to those shenanigans again.  It has me running to my favourite chair with a hottie (this is a hot water bottle, not someone gorgeous I want to sleep with, and by the way, only people in the middle passage call them a hottie so I’m definitely there). 

The rhythm and routine of life can send us into a deep sleep, only to awaken in the midlife. As much as it may come with a couple of physical challenges and changes, it also comes full of opportunities to re-examine and revaluate. To pause and take a good hard look at yourself and ponder on what comes next. 

This is where it gets really good.

I mean it, literally, this IS where it gets really good.

We can polish that grubby crisis lens we’ve been squinting through.

It’s REBIRTH time……

This time there are choices, choices made for ourselves, and the refreshing reminder of the huge expanse of our free will.  Questions like ‘what do I want?’ Well, What’s on the menu? Seriously, if life is a restaurant, what are you going to order? What are you craving. What’s going to feed you, nourish you, fill you to the brim until you can’t eat another thing? 

I’m not going to pretend it’s all pretty.  No journey of becoming ever is, just look at our birth for a start. Life is usually pretty messy and our best selves or the greatest things rarely come from overstaying in our comfort zones.

In these chapters we are mortally closer to the end than the beginning.  I can tell you that I know for definite that the last chapter is much enriched by the knowledge that we have lived our best lives.  It must also be acknowledged that these years are gifts that some of our cohorts didn’t get to open.

So, I ask you. 

How do you want to do this? 

How are you going to deliver yourself into this middle passage?  

Start here. Find your jam. Rediscover old dreams that you discarded for the routine. Find out what stopped you dreaming and therapise that shit out of your system. Learn what it is that lights you up, then go and do it.  Be kind to yourself, and others, because it is the elixir of life. Whatever you do, do it because you WANT to do it.  

You are the midwife…..holding this beautiful life in your very own hands.

Own it, the time to open your eyes has arrived.