Something peculiar happens in midlife. A certain realisation can strike home. That there are 8,045,311,447 people in the world...or even more...as babies are borne as I type. So in that mass, what does an individual life mean? We buy goods that are dreamt up in a marketing suite. We eat food engineered in a laboratory by a handful of corporations. We find it hard to believe in experts, or religious organisations, or the institutions that used to give us meaning. What does the life of one person in 8 billion mean? If we work in a large organisation, our employment may be terminated, and we may find ourselves without purpose. At midlife we become acutely aware of our flaws and failures. Humiliations and defeats feature large. If we look back at the dreams we had for our life, we may feel painfully aware of how few of them we were able to achieve. Even those goals we have achieved may feel without meaning. Bradley Wiggins, the Tour De France winner, and cycling champion, found himself restless when he retired from road racing. He threw out his medals and trophies. He was unable to look at his medal cabinet and simply enjoy what he had achieved. Suddenly all those achievements didn't mean anything to him. Without the powerful routine of road racing his mind starting spinning. He tried many new sports. His mind was flooded with images. He shared stories about this violent and alcoholic father, who was also a road cyclist. He separated from his wife. This man, who appeared from the outside, in our materialistic and achievement orientated world, who seemed to have everything, appeared to have a very public mid-life crisis. As Carl Jung, the psychotherapist said,
One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie
He noted that we realised that our sun was no longer rising but setting. You can watch @Blue Zone@ on Netflix and imagine you could live to 100. Perhaps you will. Times have changed and we are more vigorous, more active, more creative in the second half of life. Sure, you can complete a triathlon in your seventies. And you may not feel old. You may feel young at heart. However, this doesn't do away with the psychic fact that our unconscious tells us that we are moving closer to dying than living. That we have less time left on our life clock, than we have expended. This is a shocking and dramatic psychic reality. It is painful. Tech billionaires track their urines and faeces, and log every meal. Some inject themselves with the plasma of younger people in the quest to live longer. But even they will have to face the truth that they will die on day.
Our orientation towards life has to radically shift. We may experience bodily symptoms. We may go to the doctor with aches and pains, and investigate the magical relief of life insurance, or medical insurance. We may become depressed and find it hard to be motivated. But Jung argued that we need to change gear in the second half of life. He based this on his own personal reflections and experiences as well as his wide reading and clinical work. He delved into the images in his mind and produced the Red Book. It is a fascinating inner dialogue populated with characters that took him to the edge of his own sanity. In fact he had to sleep with a gun under his bed, in case the exploration became too much. He would have to remind himself everyday about his own name and his address to help ground himself in reality. He came out of this period, with the insight that the second half of life is about @individuating@. Societal norms don't cut it anymore. The ego becomes less important and one has to delve into the self, or the soul, and find out who one is one a more authentic plane. The question Who Am I Really? becomes the pressing issue. To pursue this one has to look inwards. One has to sift through experiences and images, dreams and feelings, which are unique to oneself. The importance of self-reflection becomes more and more important. This can be aided by different things by different people, such as art, reading, film, religion, meditation, sport and the list goes on. Certain activities may aid the process of amplifying one's inner world.
Like Sir Bradley Wiggins, once we get off whatever bike we have been riding in the first half of life, be it career, raising children, building a home, we will find that we have to embark on another odyssey. Modern culture provides fewer sign posts for this section of life. It will still try and flog us answers that worked for the first half. By all means get botox, or white teeth, and make sure to keep the muscles strong. Keep active and find meaningful outer world activities. But alongside this ensure a space for personal reflections and development. In the first half of life we may choose to jump off a cliff into the water. In the second half of life we have to jump into ourselves. In order not to drown, or lose consciousness, we need aids to keep us afloat in the psychic rapids. Psychotherapy is one such possibility. The routine and container of seeing a therapist can help us explore the inner depths. We could do this ourselves. Indeed Freud never had a therapist as the was the founder of analysis, and he had to analyse himself. But surely, like any inherently exciting and perilous activity we are better off to have a guide into the underworld. This psychic guide can provide footholds, or shine a light when necessary. They may followed similar paths themselves. They can provide a reassuring word, or warn of danger ahead. In our increasingly capitalist and materialistic culture, which is heavily extroverted, everything seems to be measured by outward symbols. But this will not give the psyche lasting satisfaction. The second half is more about divesting, than accumulating. It is more about the inner quest, than the outer quest. We have a choice to either to engage on this consciously, or to be forced into it wailing and screaming, after a catastrophe.
Carl Jung said
“Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.”