It rocked mine. It rocked mine so hard that my current life has almost no relation to the life I had just a little over a year ago. Some of it was just life throwing curve balls. Most of it is my complete and utter change of attitude about almost everything. Not a change exactly, more like a coming back around to values and ideals that I always had but wasn't honoring.
Is this common? I know about the cliched mid-life crisis. The stereotype is a middle-aged man buying a sports car. This is woefully simplistic, and not very helpful if you find yourself in an existential melt down. It's something that is perceived as a weakness, I think. Snickered about behind your back. Very unfair. I think it's important to take stock of where we have come from and where we are going. Look around your life's landscape and pull the overgrown weeds. Add some new landscaping. Plant a tree or two. Change.
Is it good enough to live as you have always done, going through your days in a routine? Sure, if that's what makes you happy. But if you are reaching this crucial age, and you don't like how you're living, than I say: go for it. Change your life. Buy a sports car, learn to parasail, lose a hundred pounds. Life isn't over. It's just beginning. I promise I won't laugh at you behind your back. I'm cheering for you on the side-lines. I'm hoping that all of your dreams for your life come true. Don't give up, its never too late.
I'm working it. Trying to live my life the way I always thought I would. Are you?
Please let me know your story. Are you trying to live your dreams? Are you living your dream?
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Did Turning 40 rock your world?
Posted by S.D.S at 9:04 AM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I guess I always thought that I would live as I always did, and then one day, I would die. In other words, I wasn't going to slowly debilitate over time.
I have come to the realization - and an important one that only time can offer us - that change occurs slowly over time. We don't wake up one morning realizing that we aren't as flexible as the day before. We wake up one morning and realize that we're not as flexible as we were 20 years ago.
It's an eye-opener! My parents - I'm proud of them. They go to the gym 3 times each week and are in better shape than I am. They've really seen the need to keep in shape. It's been good for me to see this. It's a change I've begun in my life.
The old saying, "Use it or lose it" really applies. Gotta get up, get out, and keep moving - or some day I'll wake up and realize I can't.
I think that's what mid-life has meant to me.
It doesn’t matter if you call it a “Mid-life Crisis” or a “Revaluation or your life”. Turning 40 still “Rocked your world”. I have seen friends of mine go through this and some tend lose themselves during this “Critical Evaluation”. They are looking so hard at who they want to be that they often forget who they are. They made such dramatic changes in their lives in a relatively short time period that they lost many traits the made them who they are. At times they were almost unrecognizable from the people that I knew and loved for all those years.
It’s difficult to make proper decisions when everything is happening so fast. It’s difficult to make proper decisions when emotional. I believe that true long lasting change comes from self evaluation, calm and rational. It also comes from the help of our friends and family.
One good friend of mine really went off the deep end when his was about 48. He changed everything about himself over a two year period. He pushed his wife and children away with his new personality and life style. He was defensive when approached about the things that he was doing. He said he has the right to be happy and that this is who he was. It turns out for him that he really wasn’t that guy; he was operating from a place of fear and emotions. He’s now at a place where he knows who he is. He isn’t the person he was before and he isn’t the person that he thought he wanted to be. He is some place in between. Unfortunately he lost his wife during his “Revaluation”. He has confided in me that this has become the great regret of his life.
Sometimes we have to lose ourselves to find out who we are.
Following 40, you've really got it together! Love your comment, not only for its simplicity and truth, but because I know exactly that of which you speak. I was there...
Not to the extent of your friend, but I've been there.
It's like the battle of "who I think I want to (or should) be" verses "who I really am". It's not about becoming who we think we want to be, but rather accepting who we are and being happy with it!
On top of all that, I'm not who I was when I was 16, 18, 25, or 30. I have changed, but it's been part of the growing process. As long as I'm honest with myself, where I am right now is the best place I can be right now.
I soooooo look forward to reading this blog and the comments. :-)
That’s very succinct Comler. I am not the person that I thought I would be as a young man. Nothing really worked out as I planned. But I am happy with the person that I have become, although I still need to work on myself. I go to therapy weekly and try to improve. Every stage of my life is new and I sometimes need help getting to the right decision.
I love my family; my wife and children. Everything I do for myself benefits them.
That "mid-life crisis" label is a little bit misleading. In my own life there have been more than a couple of these. Sometimes they seem to start from within, sometimes they're triggered by outside events.
At 25, I found I really had my ladder up against the wrong tree, and changed everything about what I was doing and who I was doing it with.
At 35, my corporate employer closed our division and my life went into upheaval, changing job, location, rescrambling relationships all over the place.
And then came 40, when many of my so-called settled decisions about myself were revised ... and also when, over about 18 months, my vision went from eagle-eye to needs glasses and my memory went from 'managing dentist appointments 6 months out, in my head, for a family of 4' to 'need a Daytimer to know what I'm doing tomorrow.'
Similar shifts around 60, as well.
The good news is that each of these periods of 'rocked my world' has resulted in lots of 'something better' than what was left behind.
For me 40 was not so much a crisis, but a realization. Crisis implies difficulty, uncomfortable uncertainty and a call for immediate action or reaction. Realization is a slower, calmer awakening.
I found myself around 39 realizing that I was almost 40. I thought to myself, "Wow, 40 is sort of grown up!" LOL I thought about what 40 meant to me when I was 15, 20 or 25; and realized that my young vantage point of that age told me that at 40 you were whatever you wanted to be. Now that I was going to be 40, I needed to allow myself to be. Not to be anything specific, just to be.
In younger years you develop goals. They are based upon some ideal that you see in your family, your town, maybe even t.v. They are rarely based upon who you really are. I spent years creating that. The career, the marriage, the home, the children. My ideal was so defined that it limited my ability to just enjoy what I had. Don't get me wrong, I have always been one to enjoy life to a certain extent. Ask anyone that has seen me through the years and they will likely picture me with a smile. However, I spent much more time than necessary dwelling upon my expectations.
As I reached my awakening, my realization, I tried to start letting go of those rigid expectations. I say "start" because after 40 years, you don't do it over night. Each day I learned to appreciate and learned to ask myself why this or that HAD to be the way I thought it should be. When I had no answer, I could let it go. I could become.
It also created a spiritual awakening. In my world, you raised your children in the church. Raised Catholic with a Lutheran mother, I thought I was very open to different religions. How funny it is now to look at how almost identical they are and think I was open! It was hard to convince myself that I could explore my own spirituality and teach my children about all the possibilities of spirituality and religion on my own, without, God Forbid, an actual building. Again, I was closer to becoming.
There are still aspects to be realized in my awakening, my becoming. At 43, I am not there yet. I now live in pure joy 75% of the time. I wake up smiling. I go to sleep smiling. I can be more me now than ever before in my life and I fully anticipate being even more me tomorrow. I can’t let what I thought I should be define me any more. Not in a defiant, aggressive way, but as a release that gives great relief and peace.
So I will continue to become and will now enjoy the journey rather than fighting to make sure the journey is on a specific path, going to a specific place. I will explore different paths that meander and lead me places that I had never before thought about, and I will stop along the way to enjoy the things that give me the greatest pleasure. This is what 40 meant for me.
Post a Comment