I first read about this when I was a grad student. Theoretically, it made sense to me, but I hadn’t experienced it. I tried to imagine what it would like. Perhaps I got a glimmer of the experience, but not much more than that. Today, well….let’s just say I’m living it.
My first experience of it happened about twenty years ago. Some people call it a crisis. But I didn’t have a crisis. I did get a new car when I was in my forties. It wasn’t a red sports car. I traded in my black Honda Civic that was over ten years old for a silver Honda Civic. In much the same way, my life was really no different in my forties than it was in my thirties. But my awareness of my life surely changed.
Psychologist Daniel Levinson called it mid-life transition. He didn’t describe it as a crisis the way more popular books framed it. Instead, it was a transition. That’s how I experienced it. Over the period of some years, I came to look at my life differently. What faded were the questions about what I was going to do with my life. Instead, there was a growing awareness that I’ve already done it. Now in my sixties, that change of awareness is even truer. Gone are the ponderings of what I will be when I grow up. While many days I don’t feel grown up, I am who I will be. My sense of time has also changed. As I make decisions about retirement and future planning, it’s now in the context of wondering how much time do I have left. Will it be 20 years or 25? Surely not 30? However many years I have left, they go by so very quickly.
Please understand that I’m not complaining. I appreciate this time in my life. I have a sense of security that I didn’t have in my youth. I’m much less inclined to be concerned with the opinions of others. When I encounter those who want to pull me into things that are unhealthy or waste my time and energy, I’m more apt to walk away. Even when writing this blog, I don’t shy from topics that others may find uncomfortable as I did when I began ten years ago.
In my forties, I navigated through the waters of the mid-life transition. Honestly, it was very freeing. That process freed me from many useless preoccupations. Now in my sixties, I am aware that the next transition is occurring. Psychologists call it the “late adult transition.” It’s a transition that parallels the transition of retirement. To be honest, this one has me a bit nervous. What raises my anxiety is seeing so few white men like me transition well into retirement. I wonder how I will do.
I have two colleagues who have been successful in their careers. Even though their health and stamina have diminished, they clearly fear letting go of fulltime work. In the last couple of years, they both said to me things like, “If I don’t do this job, I don’t know what I’ll have.” As I watch them, I’m aware they just aren’t able to maintain the engagement needed for their careers. But they also don’t seem able to consider making life changes to focus on other pursuits. In the meantime, others who are fond of them cover up for their errors in the workplace.
But there’s another colleague who retired a few years ago. He’s now a successful novelist and seems to have reinvented himself in a way that is creative and fulfilling. When I’m in touch with him, he doesn’t miss his earlier career though he does miss the contact with those he worked with for years.
It seems to me that what has been critical to me about navigating transitions in life has been the important dimension spirituality offers. During the mid-life transition, I was very deliberate about spiritual practice. The reflections in my book, Stumbling Into Life’s Lessons, were written during that period in my life. Now, as I move through this later-in-life transition, I am aware that I need to be mindful of the things that nurture my spirit. It’s those things that will enable me to consider what life will be like in a few years after my retirement. My colleagues who seem to be clutching onto their careers as their only source of identity are helpful examples that remind me that I am not my work. My colleague, the novelist, has shared with me the rich experience of this transition is an opportunity for something new that can be life-enhancing.
So, like all of us, I move on and into the future. While I don’t know what my life may yet become, I know that life is a series of transitions from one way of being to another. Through those transitions, believing that life is good, and trusting that all will be well, provide the true strength needed for the journey.
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