Midlife: A Series of Strategies
to Make Buried Feelings Stay Buried
By our mid-30s or 40s, when the personality is complete, we have
experienced much of what life has to offer. And as a result, we can pretty
much anticipate the outcome of most experiences; we already know how
they’re going to feel before we engage in them. Because we’ve had several
good and bad relationships, we’ve competed in business or settled into our
career, we’ve suffered loss and encountered success, or we know what we
like and dislike, we know the nuances of life. Since we can predict the
likely emotions ahead of an actual experience, we determine whether we
want to experience that “known” event before it actually occurs. Of course,
all of this is happening behind the scenes of our awareness.
Here is where it gets sticky. Because we can predict the feelings that
most events will bring, we already know what will make our feelings about
who we really are go away. However, when we reach midlife, nothing can
completely take away that feeling of emptiness.
You wake up every morning and you feel like the same person. Your
environment, which you relied on so heavily to remove your pain or guilt or
suffering, is no longer taking away those feelings. How could it? You
already know that when the emotions derived from the external world wear
off, you will return to being the same leopard who hasn’t changed its spots.
This is the midlife crisis that most people know about. Some try really
hard to make buried feelings stay buried by diving further into their external
world. They buy the new sports car (thing); others lease the boat (another
thing). Some go on a long vacation (place). Yet others join the new social
club to meet new contacts or make new friends (people). Some get plastic
surgery (body). Many completely redecorate or remodel their homes
(acquire things and experience a new environment).
All of these are futile efforts to do or try something new so that they can
feel better or different. But emotionally, when the novelty wears off, they
are still stuck with the same identity. They return to who they really are
(that is, the bottom hand). They are drawn back to the same reality they
have been living for years, just to keep the feeling of who they think they
are as an identity. The truth is, the more they do—the more they buy and