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Lost at Midlife
Day after day life turns grey
A client enters the therapist’s office wearing one Rolex on each hand and tells his story.
It’s a story about his successes in life, about everything he accomplished - all by himself.
The therapist also hears about many houses, yachts and mistresses until the big question comes along: <I have all this and I can have more, but somehow it does not make me happy anymore–what’s going on? >
Except for the number of watches, the story I heard in my existential psychotherapy classes is true. Many of us are aware of this fundamental question, and there comes a certain phase in life when we cannot ignore it anymore.
“Do you not see the tired commuter, the depleted homemaker, the businessman with the third martini — all longing, yearning, for something larger in their lives?” James Hollis
This phase in life usually arrives around our late thirties and forties — our midlife. The time of changing our life agenda.
Something is different — the “right” way is lost
Up to that moment, there seemed to exist the right way, some kind of plan about what to do in our lives in a well-respected order: we go to school; we go to work; we start a family or decide not to and continue…
