Now there is a new way to look at the strange things happening to mid-life men: not as symptoms of something wrong, but as signs of something right and normal and necessary.
Something promising and productive.
We have always assumed that something must be wrong! when a grown man starts making unexpected changes on asking basic questions, like “What do I really want?” or “Where do I go from here?” because we assume that by forty a man should know exactly who he is, what he wants, and where he’s heading.
These negative assumptions reflect the bias of our culture: In America we still believe that people finish with the business of growing up in their twenties and never really change in any substantial way thereafter.
But these beliefs are based on a profound misconception of 1 what it means to be an adult. Our tendency to misinterpret and distort the meaning of the middle years was perfectly described some time ago by writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh:
We Americans, with our terrific emphasis on youth, action and material success, certainly tend to belittle the afternoon of life . . . and therefore this period of ex-panding is often tragically misunderstood….
The signs that presage growth, so similar, it seems to me, to those in early adolescence: discontent, restlessness, doubt, despair, longing, are interpreted falsely as signs of decay. In youth one does not as often misinterpret the signs; one accepts them quite rightly, as growing pains. …
But in middle age . . . one runs away; one escapes— into depressions, nervous breakdowns, drink, love-affairs, or frantic, thoughtless, fruitless overwork. Anything, rather than face them. Anything, rather than stand still and learn from them.
One tries to cure the signs of growth, to exorcise them, as if they were devils, when really they might be angels of annunciation.
Like Lindbergh, our poets and playwrights and novelists have always known that human beings are capable of astonishing transformations even in their later years. But it is only recently that social scientists too have finally discovered the painful trials and joyful possibilities of adulthood.
Today there is ample evidence which shows that, contrary to our popular assumptions, adult life is neither a static state of affairs nor a slow slide downhill. It is a process of continuing development.
Today we are learning that people grow and change throughout their entire life course. Sometimes they go through periods that are relatively calm and stable. But at other times they go through more turbulent and confusing periods—when their life is in flux and their personality is expanding.
These findings have the greatest significance for our understanding of the mid-life period. They enable us to look at an Old problem in an entirely new way. A hopeful way.
From this new perspective we can see that what is happening to Harry, and a lot of other men in their middle years, is neither shameful nor peculiar nor symptoms of disease. Rather, behavior that we viewed as strange or troublesome in the past can now be seen as a sign that a man is going through a developmental crisis.
The painful questions that hit around forty signal arrival at I crossroads: A man has reached the point where his internal evolution demands a fresh burst of growth.
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