A mid-life existential crisis was not supposed to happen to me as I have been on a self-improvement path since November 2018. However, at 49, I viscerally sense the walls closing in. Time feels like it is running out as I enter the decade known as “Sniper’s alley”, I wonder what my life has amounted to and what useful future lies ahead. Is it just more of the same but with a gradually declining quality? No, I reject this prognosis daily, yet like a ghost it lurks in the shadows, but its anguished groans can no longer be ignored. It haunts both by day and the night.
Most of my friends continue to plough a successful career furrow. Some are even semi-retired with money in the bank to see them off into the twilight and I get nervous about my progress. I haven’t done too badly if you grade my life against what society expects: working; paying taxes; From the outside, it all looks like it should.
On the inside, however, I’m suffocating; gasping for air. How much longer can I keep the pretence up? Most weekdays, I feel like I wasn’t made for this earth or at least I wasn’t made for this straight-jacketed production line, yet here I am putting on a brave face as I fill out my spreadsheets and develop my corporate “stratplans” (strategy plans) praying they don’t induce the early death of my body as they take my unwilling mind a hostage.
It irks that it has taken me 50 years to realise who I am. To understand what fires me up and what takes the wind out of my sails. I admire those who worked this out earlier and have been able to build a successful life around it.
There is no place for ingratitude, because God has blessed me abundantly with a wife, family and assets and allowed me to work for a decent and caring company. I want to be very measured, knowing that it all it can be taken away in a heartbeat but I have allowed life to be done unto me, living in dread almost every day since my earliest memories. I mostly don't enjoy the journey and this is a problem. My current role however, even with its frustrations and enjoyable moments, has crystallised in my mind, my strengths and weaknesses. I finally understand I will be never be a “sensor”; One of those “thrusting” types. A machine-like creature, who grinds it out daily with a relentless desire for control. Sensors. I deeply admire them and I have always wanted to be one. To have that cool logic, ego and drive - The life I could make, if only I was wired that way. But that is not me. My role is to play the intuitive warrior poet. Numbers are important, but the people and meaning of life is more important still. My role is to inspire and move people to a better life. This is what gives my life meaning and fire. This I enjoy.
Your 16 waking hours have enough to occupy them on matters closer to the homestead than to worry about the machinations of Klaus Schwab or wonder if the election was “stolen”. Maybe if you are conservative or a Christian you thought, you were virtuous in your outrage, but are we being played? Are we squandering useful energy and time on ephemerality?
Over the last 2 years on this blog I have made a series of intermittent posts. My intent has always been to explore the question posed by Francis Schaeffer, “How then should we live?” Intellectually, we all know the answer - “It is to Glorify God and enjoy him forever” (Westminster Catechism). If you scroll through my previous posts you will see elements of this thinking, but I have gone down rabbit holes - writing about everything from motorcycling to Christian nationalism, The latter, a contentious subject, is an area that I have waded into clumsily but my intent has always been to answer the question: What is the framework by which we order our lives and live to the highest ideals? While curiosity got the better of me, I think this was a practical dead end. The wider “culture war” is not for me as it just makes me angry and distracted . It is for others who have everything else dialled in already. My only contribution can be in dealing with what is in front of me. Being faithful with what I have. Perhaps, reader you should reflect on this as well. Your 16 waking hours have enough to occupy them on matters closer to the homestead than to worry about the machinations of Klaus Schwab or wonder if the election was “stolen”. Maybe if you are conservative or a Christian you thought, you were virtuous in your outrage, but are we being played? Are we squandering useful energy and time on ephemerality?
Instead, Let us build our lives and families as a rebuke to “trash world”. Let us create a valuable heritage through our actions, based on all that is good from the past and present. Do not give the devil undue attention.
To get to my point...I want to double down on this blog on what it means to be Christian men. As much as I don’t want to enter this older, liminal phase of my life with its sure trajectory, it gives me perspective, as there is urgency.
Everything has meaning, and the world is an arena of action. We have a mind and we have physical bodies. The question is how can we make them ‘play nicely’ together so that we can live the most gloriously wonderful God honouring lives?
There is so much more beyond the hum-drum of the work cubicle and going to Target on Friday night for the weekly groceries. Life is pregnant with meaning and experiences to be had, so how do we embrace it all, squeezing every drop of life out of our three-score and ten years?
I go through short periods where I drink deeply from this well of life, but then I get stuck in extended periods of drought through an enforced routine. I’m exhausted with the roller coaster of dull mindlessness and elation.
I’ve been making changes to get the foundations right over this last month or so. To quote AJ Cortez -It is time to “eat clean, live lean and train mean”. We must stop tinkering around the edges and to get on with designing life and working it. There must be change and I’ll be writing about this over the next few weeks.
Right now, I know no one is reading these musings..but that is ok because this is still the thinking-out-loud stage. This is between God and me and the odd random person who lands here, but If I give of my best, I pray he will allow water and sunshine on this work and maybe others will be blessed by it.