There is a sweetness in surrender. This is when we arrive at the midpoint in life and feel the balance between what has come before and what is still to come. It’s bittersweet to know we are halfway through, and time is moving quickly toward our exit from the earth.
So much can be revealed in this midpoint, and clarity can be the gift. What often coalesces in this time is the desire to speak honestly about our life “just as it is.” We have an increased ability to accept what has come before, and an instinct for how to ask questions about what we expect of the time ahead.
This is bitter, and paradoxically, this also makes it sweet. It intensifies much of what we love about our lives—what is good and worth doing. When we see through the lens of gratefulness and abundance, we also know the gift of mortality and how it invites us to take more significant risks. In youth, we feel invincible. In adulthood, we usually sober up from all of life’s responsibilities.
In midlife, we know that we are not invincible, but our life experience has made risk exciting again. Life is finite, and that is suddenly the point of why we want to seize every minute.
The “carpe diem” in midlife can look so fascinatingly unique. An afternoon spent in meditation? Yes! A FaceTime story with a grandchild? Definitely. Flying to far-off places to join indigenous elders as you pivot your career into the healing arts? Why not?!
Mid-life becomes a crisis only if we miss the opportunity to assess and redefine purpose. This is the invitation for everyone in this season and we all have a different blueprint for what might come next.
The courage needed for this reevaluation and resulting changes arises in the form of pain or discomfort with our aging process. Great love and new clarity for our lives often comes on the heels of suffering, as pain pushes us forward when the time is ripe.
This pushing doesn’t always feel like a gift. It may even feel like a burden, drudgery, or even punishment. There can be long phases of feeling lost and separated from our path and purpose. All the time and energy we sacrificed in the past might seem almost worthless. This can be a profoundly disorienting season. What do we do with this unknown? We lean in. We gather around our hearth and light the fire with self-care. We invite all our most trusted friends, and support of a community, which softens the realization that we are mortal beings only here for a short time.
Midlife invites us to release the grip, allow the surrender, and embrace mortality. Welcome the pain and suffering as a sharpening of the stone and a widening of your resilience to live a life filled with possibility and anticipation. Mortality is not a punishment, it is an invitation to be present - to live, lose, heal, and find your way back to what is good and holy in this precious life. This is the nectar. This is the bitter contrast with the sweet - the beautiful and necessary balance we need.
Nataliia | Hazy Ferns | Ukraine