The Beautiful Blessing of a Midlife Crisis

By: Erik Rittenberry

Dec 02, 2022

“Mid-life crisis is what happens when you climb to the top of the ladder and discover it’s against the wrong wall.”
— Joseph Campbell

He’s a fairly good man who’s approaching the midpoint of his life. You’re probably familiar with the type.

He’s done everything right so far and he’s what they call “a success.” He’s achieved what he set out to achieve. The continuous hustle and grind have paid off pretty well for him. Money in the bank, up-to-date gadgets, big screen TVs in every room, above-average debt, a stable career, a beautiful house, a healthy family, and two cars and a boat in the driveway.

Not too shabby.

You might see this fine gentleman at the local coffee shop. He’s the man with the hunched shoulders and eyes glazed over with a lukewarm mediocrity, earbuds perpetually lodged in his ears, hair neatly combed, his testosterone levels as diminished as his spirit, and he’s likely sporting a pair of loafers that are as pristine as his civilized hands.

So far in life, he’s kept the wolves at bay and lives a nice, safe, and secure existence.

Touche.

Then on one fine sunny morning, as he’s inching along in interstate traffic on his way to work, something hits him like a hammer to the skull. Something beyond explanation. For the first time in his life, a deep-seated panic sets in. His heart bangs rapidly against his rib cage. His breathing increases. There is an overwhelming sense of death that seeps into every pore of his body.

“What the hell is this?” he asks himself.

It starts happening more often — those little gut-punching anxiety episodes that eventually evolve into depression. He can’t find the motivation he once had, the purpose, the drive. He now questions all his past decisions, his trajectory, his beliefs.

“Who the hell am I?”

He goes on an existential rampage and devours numerous self-help books, therapy sessions, long walks at night. It doesn’t help all that much. There’s something deeply off, he feels it in the gut, but he’s not quite sure what it is.

The fear of death has always been there but somehow it’s made its way to the forefront of his waking consciousness. A sniffle, a cough, or a sharp pain in the gut initiates unimaginable terror of his mortality. It gnaws on every fiber of his being.

The sudden awareness of death begins to rob him of sleep. He hears the haunting words “it’s too late” floating in the dark. He becomes warily acquainted with those 3am streetlights that seep into his room as he lies awake watching the shadows of trees tremble on the walls.

It’s in these predawn hours that it begins to dawn on him that his life has been mostly a charade; a man playing a role in someone else’s script. Like the character in Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, he realizes “what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.”

He finally notices the veil he’s put up to save appearances — the mask, the adopted role, the ungenuine antics that have embodied so much of his life.

He knows he’s merely been plodding through his days repetitiously, devoid of vigor and creative drive. He’s lived on auto-pilot since he can remember. His outer busyness is to disguise his inner laziness — a thwarting of his creative spirit. A denial of his soul’s promptings. And his numerous dull obligations are contributing to his undoing. He knows it.

Somewhere along the way, he’d lost touch with that inner fire and now finds himself completely entangled in a web of domestication. His over-identification with his cultural/family role has eroded every fiber of who he truly is. And goddamnit he knows it. He feels it all over his body. Every rigid and tense muscle is a manifestation of his agitated state of being.

His natural intuitions have waned and his instincts, now dull and atrophied, are no longer a reliable guide in life. This man has strayed too far from nature’s path. Too far from his childhood dreams and his inner voice. He’s become an automaton who lives solely to appease the sterile demands of his frantic culture.

What is the purpose of “success” if it does nothing to enhance the pleasure of being?

This man of achievement who had been sailing so smoothly down the river of life, now finds himself washed up on the muddy shores with no direction. He looks around at the vast, unfamiliar terrain: “where do I go, what’s next?”

Analytical psychologist Murray Stein reminded us that “when things are going by plan, the soul sleeps, its realm as faded and vague as moon and stars in the brightness of the sun.”

He’s not alone. Many of us have or one day will face a certain type of midlife malaise. Especially living in a hollow culture whose dominant values are money, power, and so-called progress; a culture notably afraid of aging.

The brilliant Swiss psychologist Carl Jung treated many patients much like the man that I’ve profiled. Jung writes:

I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life.
They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success of money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking.
Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their life has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning. If they are enabled to develop into more spacious personalities, the neurosis generally disappears.

However, Jung tells us that there’s still hope for this man. The midlife malaise is a blessing in disguise.

Even though it might not seem like it at first, this man is highly fortunate that this severe onset of despair has prompted a reaction, a need to look deeper, a reevaluation.

But it’s all too common for many people to ignore this acute despair and instead double down on their depthless, egocentric existence. With their self-esteem in the gutter, many will remain devoted disciples to their “convulsive little ego,” in the words of William James.

This is the stereotypical man who buys the unaffordable sports car and starts bangin’ his 20-year-old high-heeled secretary in cheap motels on weekday afternoons. Or it’s the middle-aged woman who takes on a more provocative wardrobe change and becomes well-acquainted with the local cosmetic surgeon. They become compulsive and engage in destructive behavior in an attempt to feed that gaping void in their life. Anything to deny their mortality and cling to their fading youth.

This is not the way to go.

This road leads to mental anguish, lifelong medication, and a pathological dependency on their “compulsive little ego.” It’s a well-paved road to ruin and our debauched society is saturated with these types.

Carl Jung, probably the most profound psychological thinker of the 20th century, understood midlife to be a vital transition period in the life of modern humans.

The first half of life is mostly theatrical.

We become highly socialized and tend to blindly adhere to the collective values of the place we’re born into. We become over-compliant and hide behind customs and conventions and live in ways that are expected of us.

Society is the great gleaming stage where we adopt our roles and perform accordingly. In these formative years, we strive for success, power, approval, and notoriety. We try to make our mark on the world, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but a lot of times it’s obtained at the cost of our deeper, true selves.

Our false self prevails at the expense of authenticity.

We carry out our lives in hopes of great applause. Then, one day, we start to notice the curtains lowering. We panic. This is the point when we start to realize that the cultural values we’ve clung to our whole lives no longer suit who we truly are. Time is running out and we start to question.

This is the so-called Midlife Crisis, “the confrontation with the unconscious,” and no one’s immune to its subtle or sometimes harsh effects.

But if navigated right, it’s that golden gateway that leads to a more profound second half of life. And it’s an immense opportunity for inner growth, revitalization, and, in the words of Jung, INDIVIDUATION — the ultimate development of the “true personality.”

In other words, it’s a calling to emancipate ourselves from the cultural mask and become who we are.

Jungian analyst, James Hollis writes: “In the second half of life, the questions become: ‘Who now, apart from the roles you play, are you? What does the soul ask of you? Do you have the wherewithal to shift course, deconstruct your painfully achieved identity, risking failure, marginalization and loss of collective approval?’”

Jung, in one of his most brilliant and poetic passages on midlife, writes:

“The nearer we approach the middle of life, and the better we have succeeded in entrenching ourselves in our personal attitudes and social positions, the more it appears as if we had discovered the right course and the right ideals and principles of behavior.
For this reason we suppose them to be eternally valid, and make a virtue of unchangeably clinging to them. We overlook the essential fact that the social goal is attained only at the cost of a diminution of personality.
Many — far too many — aspects of life which should have been experienced lie in the lumber-room among dusty memories; but sometimes, too, they are glowing coals under grey ashes.”

Like many of us, this man is at a crossroads in life. He can choose the easy road like the vast majority, or he can take the road less traveled, the road that leads to a beautiful awakening of his spirit. But he must have the courage to “separate from the collective qualities that have been identified with,” in the words of Murray Stein, and take the time to integrate the “other” personality that’s been suppressed for far too long.

As Jung states, “midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.”

This man must learn to adjust his life from the frivolous mode of HAVING to the integral mode of BEING and enter into the second half of life, not as a cog in the machine, but as a self-realized human being.

“The way to being,” Erich Fromm reminds us, “lies in penetrating the surface and grasping reality.” He goes on elsewhere to say that “the basis for any approach to self-transformation is an ever-increasing awareness of reality and the shedding of illusions.”

This is the call to adventure — the adventure of BEING. To give up one’s egocentricities and run towards that mighty roar in the dark forest. To think beyond our socially accepted thought patterns. To forget about “rank” and “title” and develop a more unique and contemplative spirit that no longer yields to the soul-sucking demands of a machine-made world.

The ultimate aim of the second half of life is to live adequately and independently and give full use of one’s powers and talents in service of something larger than ourselves.

I’ve devised a little booklist below that I think is quite necessary for all of us to read as we approach the second half of life. But first, I want to end with one of my favorite poems from the great Hermann Hesse that beautifully captures what it means to evolve through the stages of life.

As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.
Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slave of permanence.
Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

Poetic Outlaws

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Poetic Outlaws

The Beautiful Blessing of a Midlife Crisis

By: Erik Rittenberry

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