Debate proliferates about when exactly to "prime time for a midlife crisis" begins. Thirty five? Forty? Forty five? Fifty? Fifty five? I remember my mother dismissing my precocious self-references to midlife when I turned 39. That was back at the beginning of this journey, back when I was still feeling a perplexed, sideswiped, and maybe even slightly pissed off about the aging hiccup. It was ...
Midlife Quest
I've talked about a midlife reboot, proclaimed a midlife manifesto or three, and meditated on middle age long enough to grok the importance of a midlife leap rather than a midlife crisis. More like leaps versus crises... But the adventure, one I originally anticipated being a tidy yearlong reflection (ergo 40x41), has proven to be far lengthier and more complex than I imagined. I'm slowly coming ...
Grief, Love and Memento Mori
Excuse, if you would, the slightly morbid tenor of today's post about grief and love and memento mori. Or skip it! But if you stay and read you just may feel the rush of life and enthusiasm that I'm experiencing. An intriguing and new-to-me connection has been made — an embrace of love and memento mori — that is especially resonant now as I struggle with the terribly premature loss of a friend, a ...
Doing
"For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them." ~ Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics ...
Freestyle
When song turned to dance thirty years ago my rustic, unplugged, and MTV-free childhood rendered me self-conscious, tense, and generally joyless. This is a self effacing glimpse into a self effacing riff on whistling and dancing. The poem is still rough, but it's coming closer to a reflection on letting go and loosening up. A lyric look at wooing whimsy. The snapshot above is totally ...
Midlife: Fumbling Forward
"I saw how a man who, unexpectedly, in midlife, had been dumped for someone else, might struggle to keep up his old sense of self, his old optimism. How he might take on an Indiana Jones look, indicative of hopes of adventure, while being careful not to get into anything new that might result in further pain. I saw the polite charm, the detachment, the silk shirt and the expensive restaurant ...