On Google I notice the apparently endless questions about midlife crisis. It sometimes seems these requests are couched in a strong desire to somehow curtail or avoid the myriad of gifts provided by a life crisis. The problem with this way of thinking is that there is NO WAY to avoid an occasional crisis, and you will never learn and grow if you don’t bottom out every now and then!
Let’s go through the five things we cannot change about our lives:
- Everything changes and ends.
- Things do not always go according to plan.
- Life is not always fair.
- Pain is part of life.
- People are not loving and loyal all the time.
If we can somehow learn to accept these five truths then we will never be in crisis again. Unfortunately most of us cannot. By the time we hit midlife we are old enough to have experienced a number of life’s ups and downs. We know anything can happen at any time to any one of us, and therefore we have learned to cherish the good times in life.
We have also learned how frail and vulnerable we can feel when we hit a bad patch. This is our opportunity to feel human, fallible and just like everyone else. If we are lucky we can find some compassion within for both our own flaws, and for everyone else who struggles everyday to care for themselves with just a tiny bit more loving kindness.
Circumstances change, life becomes confusing, and we must sometimes accept how out of control our life can be at times, and how fundamentally ordinary we are in this world of troubled souls.
I just realized this morning that I’m now well into my second midlife crisis. I changed lots of important but external circumstances in my first crisis. Now it’s time to deal with that nasty internal baggage, that which is so much more difficult to acknowledge and change.
Issues with my health have finally gotten through to my psyche strong enough to demand proper attention. Between a serious accident and traumatic brain injury last year, and my recent experiences with Candida overgrowth, I finally see my body is trying to tell me something! The question is, what will it take to make me wake up and listen?
I’ve heard quite a bit from my body in the past few days. It informs me through a difficult case of skin infections, that I must now acknowledge and accept how I have stuffed my feelings by way of a serious sugar addiction. I also see how much I have been in denial about the mental deficits brought on by a traumatic brain injury.
The wisdom of the body is amazing! It just keeps talking until we finally listen or die!
