Opportunity Knocks Twice
Early in life boomers got used to having two things: choice and control. Since so many of the marker events of adult life have been delayed, the classic early midlife crisis, which used to be concentrated between the ages of 38 and 43, is more likely to be put off today until the mid-40s or later.
Welcome to middlescence. It’s adolescence the second time around. Turning backward, going around in circles, feeling lost in a buzz of confusion and unable to make decisions - all this is predictable and, for many people, a necessary precursor to making the passage into midlife.
Women of the Vietnam Generation are often conflicted about their earlier choices. As girls they were coded to be traditional women. When they came of age, the new gospel of women’s liberation urged them to seize control of their identities. Many sacrificed their feminine longings to prove their worthiness in career worlds dominated by men. Others tried to blend the traditional feminine roles of wife and mother with their new appetite for greater independence. Whatever direction they took in their turbulent 30s as they tried to put it all together, something was shortchanged. In the 40s, we all become more acutely aware of what has been left out. Is there still time to squeeze it in?
Most men respond to the sudden pinch of time at 40 with a burst of speed in the race for career position: “It’s my last chance to pull away from the pack.”
People who do shake themselves out of complacency at this stage are flourishing. The 40s are the gateway to a new beginning, beyond the narrow roles and rules of the first half.
When the voice of the ‘60s, Paul Simon, turned 50 in 1991, he reassured his flock that “the vision that was planted in my brain still remains, within the sound of silence.” On a 1993 world tour, an emotional high point was reached when his own estranged partner, Art Garfunkel, briefly joined Simon onstage to perform a replica of their hymn “Bridge Over Troubled Waters.” For a few moments the oneness of the ‘60s lived again.
But these partners have gone different routes to the journey to midlife. Garfunkel refused to grow up. He would have been happy to go on indefinitely singing Simon and Garfunkel songs. At 50 he had the same choirboy aura and the same puff of blond curls under his baseball cap that were his signatures at 17. Meanwhile, Paul Simon had moved on in personal and artistic growth.
Ann Beattie (born 1949), chronicler of her ‘60s generation, has eloquently expressed the incompleteness felt by so many of her contemporaries. “… The war in Vietnam made people make choices that were either terrible compromises to them, or scared them to death, or that embarrassed them … the political upheaval made people want to grab on to a life pretty fast. And it didn’t often work … many of the characters search for, and can’t seem to find, a sense of community. …”
The 40s are the time to rediscover community on a more realistic plane. Before this decade is out, if you are determined to become authentically yourself, you will find a way to assemble all the parts of your nature into one whole. You will have to stop pretending to be the person you have been and begin to recognize and ultimately accept who, or what, you are becoming.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Gail Sheehy Universal Press Syndicate