The Midlife Maze – Navigating Life’s Uncertainties with Calm and Grace

It is said in psychology that a mid life crisis happens at a point where you start thinking of yourself from now until death instead of from birth until now.  I would say that is very true and it makes sense that you evaluate where you are at in life, how far you have come in accomplishing what you wanted out of life and it scares the beejesus out of you when you believe for whatever reasons that you are failing at that.  You start to estimate your remaining time left in minutes and you don’t feel happy, fulfilled, loved, successful (whatever the measuring stick is to you.)  You feel sad and depressed that this is what you did with your one and only chance at life and now essentially you catastrophisize that it is now over.  This is a classic point in time where marriage breakdowns happen as we search for what the true meaning of life is (for us.)  Some of us experience empty nest, hormonal shifts, health decline physically and cosmetically, and we grasp with how we want to use “the time we have left”.

I don’t want to sound like I have figured this all out, because I definitely have not.  It’s like understanding there is a problem and you can see the problem, you understand why the problem is there, but there really is no way to fix it.  There is no solution that fits all and at times for me it feels like a mouse going through a maze trying to find the piece of cheese.  The mouse can smell the cheese but it doesn’t know how to get there.  It tries to follow it’s instincts, left, then right, roadblock, left again, right again, dam it road block again, as it goes searching for the way to get there.  It knows the cheese is there, somewhere, because it’s senses tell it that it is there.  It trusts it senses but no matter how hard it tries, it appears that it’s senses cannot be relied upon.  Maybe it just thinks it smells cheese and it’s not really there? Maybe someone else got to the cheese first? As it gets farther and farther into the maze it seems more hopeless as it can’t even go back to where it came from, the maze is too difficult now.  I’m just guessing at this analogy but I’m thinking as the mouse searches and searches, it’s heart rate and blood pressure would rise as it gets closer to it’s goal.  The smell gets stronger, the end game so much closer than before.  It becomes more and more sure that there is actually cheese there but again it doesn’t know how to get there.  It starts sniffing frantically, it’s little whiskers are moving rapidly, ears are pointed straight up, at this point it is so fixated on the cheese that if another mouse was to come and compete with it, it would beat the other mouse to death.  The fixation of the cheese is all consuming to the mouse, it doesn’t know if the sun is shining outside, if it’s spouse and babies are being chased by a cat, the only thing it can think of is the CHEESE.  Now my heart is even starting to race thinking about being in constant search of the cheese and constantly being behind a road block. 

If you could reason with the mouse, what would you tell it to do?

I’d probably say something like “listen mouse, you know the cheese is at the end, calm down, you will get there eventually, be smart, slow down, no one is getting out of here until it’s the end.” “It doesn’t matter how long it takes you to get there, you will eventually, just believe in yourself and believe that some crazy scientist human put a piece of cheese at the end just to test you.”  “If you get there and there is no cheese, you had no choice but to go through the maze.” “If there is cheese, then YAY, that’s a bonus.”

You don’t know how long it is, until you get there.  Wherever there is.  The only thing to be sure of is today.  So think about it, journal about it, crisis about it, contemplate about it, but then make peace about it.  The only certainty I know is that life is uncertain. You navigate the best that you can, sometimes you need to stay the course, sometimes you need to adjust and move along in a different path.  Either way, we are all in this maze together, navigating every day, and every day we have a choice to be smart, calm, and peaceful or we have a choice to be frantic, manic, irritable and mean.  Today I’m not looking for any cheese, or wondering about my life from now until death, I’m just going to enjoy the sunshine, a glass of ice tea, a nap and be grateful for my life from birth until now. 

Chat soon, 

Michelle