Go Up Brightly (Photo: Geo Davis)
I’ve just read a quick, clever, and compelling look at magnificent midlife in The Atlantic by James Parker. Here’s a tease (with advice for middle agers to “feed the flame” and “Go up brightly”!
You know yourself, quite well by now. Life has introduced you to your shadow; you’ve met your dark double, and with a bit of luck the two of you have made your accommodations. You know your friends. You love your friends, and you tell them.
[…]
At any rate, if you’re reading this, you’re not dead. So: Should you leap gladly, grinningly, into these contradictory middle years, when everything is speeding up and slowing down, and becoming more serious and less serious? The middle-aged person is not an idiot. Middle age is when you can throw your back out watching Netflix. The middle-aged person is being consumed by life, and knows it. Feed the flame—that’s the invitation. Go up brightly.
— Read on www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/ode-to-middle-age/603067/