At the holy land of Puttaparthi,where I dare not utter a lie,I am being brutally honest to confess that I am going through my mid-life crisis.My colleagues tell me that I have been doing well in my new job.My bosses laud my acheivement which have been ahead of targets. I wonder how someone who has been doing so reasonably well, be so unhappy. On the inside, I waver between depression, feeling totally out of control and feeling like I am going to explode because I am so full of pent-up emotions.....confusion,anger,alienation. In the bloom of an apparently smooth life pattern, there remains a sense of emptiness,of unfulfilled dreams and guilt.There is a longing of an undefined dream or goal, a desire to relive feelings of my youth,a need to spend more time alone. This is accompanied by a sense of remorse,vaguely defined as having drifted away from my original life intentions,as having ill-lived life so far. Such feelings combined with the sudden awareness that life is finite can be quite unsettling.
But why does this happen?Does it hit everyone?Can it miss you?Has my home life lost some of it's sparkle?Has life become a hackneyed procedure?Overtime through the prism of experience, things become repetitive. Much of what one does has a stale taste of 'been there, done that'.Is it that most people go through this period but are not willing to acknowledge? Is it the fear of non-acceptance or of being ridiculed? In the small town of Shillong,I saw a balding man speeding away in a red new Merc and heard a passer-by mumble...see that man in his mid-life crisis. Can't a man at 35 or 40 find his happiness and love without someone ridiculing him? Isn't it a stage of one's life?Do we make fun of children going through the toddler stage or teens going through puberty?My view is that this man was flaunting his accomplishment of perhaps a dream that he nurtured since he was 20, but could never afford then and fulfilled only at 40. He must have worked hard for it and had every right to do so.
Is mid-life about distractions? 'To keep the dragon at bay,know the dragon and know him well'. We love distractions and the feelings that are associated with their wonderful instant gratification. 'No distractions are worth your time'....mid-life is certainly not distraction,it deserves it's time and a careful nurturing.
It is the point in life where your inner curious child ,the one that all of us have deep inside is ready to re-emerge and begin to influence your life again. Your inner child is saying to you that you are now ready for new and more powerful experiences and because you have gained so much knowledge and wisdom by living your life upto this time,you can handle much more.It is the second adult-hood and a chance to be the person we were meant to become.Midlife is where reality sets in and the old beliefs crumble under the weight of logic,experience and common sense.It is the time of increased reflection and introspection. It is the catalyst that trigger change and the time that you decide to either sink or swim.
We pause and think of our lives,whether it be about missed opportunities or just that we don't have another fifty years to live;the time for putting things off is over. The time is NOW...it's our final wake up call.
Paradoxically, in such a moment of profound uncertainity 'Follow your passion' can become a reality again.To quote Hellen Keller " Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all". 'To be or not to be....'....What did Shakespeare actually question? May be life boils down to taking risk or letting someone control your ambitions.
My mid-life has been beautiful. My 'Eureka moment' was born during this period.It is the time when I realised that there is more to me than what I do for a living.I deny to call it a crisis,I call it a mid-life awakening, a transition or maturescence.It is also the time I realised the value of practising moderation...the time I woke up to find that I don't need the cheese badly enough to put up with the rat race.As I grow older, I will look back at this period of my life with lot of fondness and nostalgia.I pledge to take this part of my life in a religious fervor and with this conviction firm on my mind I move on....a little sadder, a little wiser.
