The midlife crisis

You know it… The cliché vision of the man in mid life with his brand new sports car- but why? What is this mid-life crisis?

Mid life is a threshold. We move through many thresholds in our lives, some bigger then others. Some so huge, our life is so altered by the end of it we are barely recognisable. There is a transition from one phase to another, hopefully an awakening to the deeper meaning of life, a few layers of defence shed, some of our armour relinquished, an ego re-visioned. A time that we can ask ‘how did I become this version of me?’ Where we can see that life is much more then who think we are, our accomplishments, our stories or who people think we are.

This is the magic, painful, shedding mid life crisis in all its glory. But the way it feels is more like this: messy, painful, like dying, a bombshell hitting you round the face. Ouch.

For some they are at the age where there are physical changes as we lose the shape and form we are used to, our hair falls out of our head and grows somewhere else.

For many we look back and realise that the choices we made were to please others or to accumulate things that we never really needed.

We miss our children or we miss not having children or we miss the time when it was all about us. Wherever we are we miss where we are not.

We lose the steady footing, the delusion slips away, we have nothing to grip on to as we stare into the abyss. We are dying! We are going to die and we have forgotten to truly live, some of us will cry, weep. We are gripped with fear. Without the illusions to shield us from our mortality, without the excitement of the love affair, the joy of new children, the need to keep climbing the career ladder, maybe the housing ladder was an elaborate trick as we realise all that kept us striving and not living.

Mid life is when we wake up.

If we want to get the hell back to sleep that’s when we buy cars, get a new lover, we look externally for distractions to get away from facing our internal landscape, the truth, the fact that we are dying, that we are mortal, this life was only ever temporary! That was the deal. So maybe we go to the gym more, go out more, drink more. Distract ourselves more from the truth.

Or?

Or we face it. We sit with the unknowing. The lack of control. The diminishing sexy appeal. The sagging skin, the hairy nostrils (sometimes ears), you sit with the changing, the movement into the next phase of your life. You sit on the threshold where your identity is not what it was and not what it is yet to become. You embrace the rickety-ness of it all and the fear and the pain and you let the hell go. You accept. You have faith. Embracing the grief for all that never was and all that was that will never be again. You embrace and you feel.

Then slowly, rebirth- you break through, fresher, brighter, your wonderful and wise soul shining bright through your beautiful eyes. There you sit. With nothing to fear. With a knowing and a wisdom. A wisdom that you can only get from facing yourself. From seeing yourself as you truly are. Understanding that through everything in life, there you sat.

Okay.

And then you enjoy the wind on your face more, the sun rays hitting the grass. You make the most of this gift we call life.

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Mid life crisis are not actually limited to ‘mid-life’ they can happen and do happen for people all through adulthood some bigger then others. I hit my threshold at 29 and my life was transformed, through all that pain and my rock bottom I found an absolutely massive pile of gold.

I am excited about the next one.

Deborah Maloney-Marsden is a transpersonal psychotherapist and evolutionary leadership coach www.deborahmaloney.com