Is This It...?
Author: Russell Wickens

For most of us the turbulence and drama of a mid life crisis take place over a number of years, hallmarked by those nagging questions of “Is this it? Is this all there is to look forward to?” To others, our friends and family, the external signs are all too obvious: relationships breaking down, drama-fuelled affairs, workplace-related dissatisfactions and their own concomitant frictions. Internally though, the restive anger and confusion are symptoms of a deeper, more profound anxiety. We may be reaching a watershed that marks the end of growing up and the start of growing old, but do we understand it? We often sense intuitively the momentousness of the change we are caught up in. However, the sheer size and weight of its implications usually engender a fear that is paralysing. All the security that accompanies our life plans is gone because there is no longer a life plan. The comforting linear progression of life, job, family, career has been erased like a chalk mark from a blackboard, leaving in its place an ill-defined smudge. Where the assumption of our lives between early thirties and late forties showed the interest on our previous investment of time and energy being cheerfully banked, now instead we deal with a crash with all stock value wiped out. The crisis of the mid life transition blows apart the cherished fantasy that adulthood would be an orderly, linear, competent progression between the half-forgotten dramas of adolescence and an as yet only dimly conceived senility.

We cannot afford to ignore the primacy of our inner world, nor its need for unique and authentic self-expression. To do so is to invite a shrinking of our selves, a contraction of our nature – premature decay. The psychologist Jung himself describes his own mid life transition as a crisis that tested him severely. Yet it was only through fully engaging with his own fear of the unknown and the pain that accompanied his process that he finally unearthed the rich seam of creativity that characterised his later working life. His own summation mirrors my own: that to deny or avoid the growth of this essential process through fear of the pain, will entail the missed opportunity of real growth and creativity and the chance to find out just how uniquely powerful we are. We will follow the same circular path, passing the same familiar landmarks of crumbling life structure, feeling the same overwhelming anger, alienation and stunted expression. The choice is very simple but stark: break out of the current or be sucked inexorably into the vortex.







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Russell Wickens is a Coach specialising in mid life issues. To contact him for help in having more of the life that you want, call him on +44 (0)7976 299 482. To read previous articles and quotes, or to reserve your copy of “The Mid-Life Crisis Survival Kit!!” please go to: http://www.life-transitions.com or call: +44 (0)7976 299 482
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