Mid-Life Reconciliation

Our culture in many ways seems turned to the negative.  We valorize–to use an academic term–people like Ernest Hemingway, or Jack Kerouac, who are basically screw-ups, who have little to offer in the way of the sort of deep myth which enables individual and cultural transformation in positive ways, and whose principle contributions are aesthetic.  Having failed in the mythic realm, our more talented minds are quite frequently led to Scientism, which deals with myth by rejecting it, by rejecting subjectivity, by rejecting direct experience, by rejecting agency and the “first person”.

Small wonder that our model for aging sees youth as superior to age: how can age matter when wisdom is a chimera, and personal growth impossible?  So we pack our parents away in government funded asylums, and more or less assign them to one controlled compartment in our lives.  We can see them or not see them as we see fit, as they accord with our convenience or sense of duty, or–to be sure–in some cases with love and affection offered sincerely, although I think in most of those cases Mom and Dad live at home until truly impossible.  The wife working, of course, makes this happen sooner and more often.  It is culturally destructive in many ways, as is the erosion of the extended family.

Within this milieu we have the myth, the institution, the known “happening”, of the mid-life crisis.  You get to 40 or 50 and realize that you have been living someone else’s life, perhaps that of Madison Avenue, more likely that brought on by our cultures superficiality, and dependence on people not asking too many questions.  You go along to get along, until you can’t get along, and in the stereotype you buy a motorcycle, or grow a pony-tail, get a young girl-friend, dye your hair, etc.  This is both a way of rejecting aging, and of granting that your own behavior to this point has been tepid and lacking in audacity.

So in the classic formulation, you look forward to old age and senescence, and react by embracing the things of youth.

What I would suggest, though, is that the opposite is also possible: you can conquer old wounds, grow beyond old limitations, finish unfinished business.  You can look back and finally find reconciliation, peace, and look forward to continued growth across the rest of your life.  You can look forward to the back half of your life, not living it like some kid, not rejecting the process of becoming wise, but rather embracing it and welcoming it.  You do not need a motorcycle: you can buy a paintbrush, paints, and canvas.  You can take up that hobby which you have always dreamed of.  You can go more deeply into experience.

Oh, we have problems.  But they all have solutions.