ThatDamnedPanda
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Joined: 1/26/2009
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quote:
so for those of you going through the same thing, how are you dealing?how does one go about re-defining who you are
I think we all follow a roughly similar arc as we move through our 40s and into our 50s, but unfortunately the lessons each of us learn along the way are not necessarily always useful to others following behind us. That period of our life brings more changes, more rapidly, than any other period since our adolescence and early adulthood. And unlike most of the changes we experience earlier in life, the physical changes of middle age almost always represent loss - we're not as healthy, we're not as energetic, we have more aches and pains, and with the awareness of those changes comes the realization that all of them are only going to get worse. We're increasingly and acutely aware that much more of our life is behind us than ahead of us, and it's sometimes difficult not to feel as though every day is another step in a long decline. I know where you're coming from.
But you know what? For all the ways that the glass is half empty, there are just as many ways that it's half full. For some of us, anyway. It just requires learning a different way of measuring the glass. Over a period of time, through that veil of mourning for our lost youth, we often begin to see that our lives make sense to us in ways that they never did before. We begin to understand - i mean, really understand - all the things we learned during our early and middle adulthood, that tortured, tumultuous period when we roared headlong down the road far too fast to notice what we were racing past. All the fragmentary, seemingly unrelated lessons that we sorta noticed smacking us in the face but didn't really understand, suddenly come together and start to form a complete picture, like solving a puzzle. For some people, things make sense to us, life makes sense to us, we finally... get it.
And with that comes a kind of happiness that's hard to really recognize as happiness, at least at first. Because it's a different kind of happiness than we're used to; it looks and feels different than what we've always called happiness. For many of us, it's calmer, more peaceful, a more secure state of mind than we're used to feeling. Is it better than what we had to give up to get here? Is it a worthwhile tradeoff? I don't know. I wish I could say yes, but I don't know. Whether it's better than being young, well... in many ways, sure it is. Whether it's better overall, I really can't say, because I'm still in the middle of it myself. But whether it is or it isn't, it's at least something - something very valuable and very worth having. It is what it is, and it's what we have. So we might as well enjoy it for what it is, and grow as fully as possible into whatever potential it offers us.
You see, it's not about redefining who we are - it's about rediscovering who we are. Who we've become. Getting to know, for the first time really, this person we've been in the process of becoming all our lives. You don't need to redefine yourself. Just give it a little time, and the definitions will become clear on their own. My suggestion is to pay attention to the lessons you've learned in the first half of your life, and get acquainted with the the skills you've acquired and the talents you've developed along the way - and use those new skills and talents to build into your life whatever makes you happy and gives you satisfaction. There's no hurry. You've got the rest of your life.
_____________________________
Panda, panda, burning bright
In the forest of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Made you all black and white and roly-poly like that?
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how are you dealing with it? - 
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