The Mighty Voyager

Thoughts on mid-life

29 Jul 2011 9 Comments

by Terry Weber in Uncategorized Tags: crisis, Life, mid-life, midlife, personal, poem, poetry

Okay, someone recently told me that I need to remember the purpose of my blog. And I agreed. The original intent was to share stories of living life more adventurously, and to inspire others to have more fun–especially those mid-life folks who somehow lost themselves while raising children and making a living.

But just when is midlife? Average life expectancy in the U.S. is 78. So the halfway point is 39. Coincidentally, in the year preceding a person’s 40th birthday is when many mid-lifers begin questioning the quality of their own lives. However, it seems to me that mid-life is not just one year or one number. There are three general periods of life: the young years, the middle years, and the later years.

If we divide 78 by three, we end up with three stages of 26 years each:

• 0-26 Young years
• 27-52 Middle years
• 53-78 and beyond: later years

So you’re saying to yourself, “27 is middle-aged?”   Yes…if we divide these stages evenly. But we could look at it another way…

• 0-29 Young years
• 30-65 Middle years
• 66-78 and beyond: Later years

These numbers are presented merely to open a few eyes, when in fact, mid-life can be described as more of an attitude than a bunch of numbers. During mid-life, we gain an increasing awareness of our own mortality. We realize that someday we will not be on this Earth, at least not in the same form. We begin re-evaluating the decisions we made that created our current circumstances. Some parents, though they love their children, wonder why raising them was not as rewarding as once dreamt. We wonder why we never knew that relationships were complicated, sometimes hard work, and never like they describe in the fairy tales.

We wonder if there’s more to life than the jobs we tolerate– where we waste away for 40 hours a week just to make ends meet. We wonder if we had any impact in making the world  a better place? What goals were reached? And for some, we wonder about an afterlife…is there one? And will we be punished for our mistakes in the afterlife?

I throw all of these questions out there to open a dialogue. I do not have the answers! Send me any thoughts you have about midlife, what it means to you, what concerns you have, or even if you think your life needs no re-evaluation whatsoever! Perhaps you are perfectly happy in the exact life you want and you have no worries about aging. If that is the case, I want to hear about it!

On a related note, I recently accepted a writing challenge. The challenge was to write a poem about mid-life in less than 30 minutes—no rules—no matter how messy or “unprofessional.” My result is below. Feel free to send me any of your thoughts in regular form or in the form of a poem.

Untitled

They call it a midlife crisis

I call it an awakening

A realization

That we are more than halfway to Death’s Door

And we have not yet lived.