REALITY: On Life

You never know where you’ll find a bit of wisdom, although AARP Magazine should by it’s nature (at least as believed in some circles!) be a likely place.  But this, in the Sept/Oct 2005 issue:

"The first half of life is essentially a mistake," says James Hollis.  The genial, white-haired former literature professor makes this claim so calmly, so evenly, that it takes a minute to sink in that he has just taken the world as we know it and stood it on its ear."

In this article by Susan Roberts on Hollis, a Jungian analyst and author of Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life:  How to Finally, Really Grow Up, Roberts clarifies:

"According to Hollis, we may believe choices made in our early years were made freely, but we were just learning to fit in, to find a place for ourselves in the world. (..) Often our true selves got lost in the process."

"At midlife, we face an important crossroads.  We can continue along pathways established for us by others, or we can really grow up, break free of the past, and become true individuals."

Now obviously some of us are aware enough to have made the decisions according to our own needs, or have adjusted and been perfectly content; content enough to continue on the same road.  But for others, things that are available today just weren’t options in our younger days, and we’re just fortunate enough to be able to take up on them just as the youngin’s do. 

And I liked this info enough to check out Jung a bit deeper as well:

"Jung was chiefly interested in later life, a time he believed should be devoted to ‘individualism,’ or becoming the person one was meant to be.   

"Jung used the sun’s daily journey across the sky as a metaphor for the human life.  During the first part of the day, the sun climbs ever upward as the young person struggles to achieve a place in the world.  At noon, corresponding roughly to age 40, the sun reaches the zenith.  Now the sun’s direction changes.  Instead of a limitless expanse of sky, the person at midlife perceives the horizon, the finite limit of his or her exisence.  Whoever fails to adapt to this new direction, Jung wrote, ‘must pay with damage to his soul.’ "

I like that.