Myth and Meaning

Written by Tammie Byram Fowles, PhD, LISW-CP

Chapter Three of BirthQuake

"The most painful and difficult part of being middle-aged is that old age and dying are no longer ridiculous abstractions." - Eda Le Shan

As baby boomers progress into middle age, many of us find ourselves struggling with the hard to deny fact that we're not kids anymore. Charles Spezzano in his book, "What To Do Between Birth And Death: The Art of Growing Up," observed: "Most people over twenty-five look like grown-ups--at least on the surface. Most people over the age of twenty-five feel like teenagers inside.

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This confuses a lot of people." In our case, twenty-five has given way to thirty, forty, and fifty, and yet a significant number of us still feel like teens. What makes growing older particularly difficult for my generation is quite likely the environment in which we came of age. Gail Sheehy reports in "New Passages: Mapping Your Life Across Time," that those born between the ages of 1946 and 1956 experienced the benefits of having had the most privileged and extended period of adolescence of any other generation in history. Those of us born between the years 1956 and 1965, hold the dubious honor of being part of that distinctive class of Americans labeled, "The Me Generation." We are said to have wanted everything: fame, fortune, adventure; and we expected it now! Our images of middle age consisted of such goodies as thickening waistlines, dentures, and wrinkles. We heard, "Never trust anyone over thirty" and "What a drag it is getting old." We, the Boomers, were the ones who counted - the ones with the greatest promise. We were going to usher in the "Brave New World." Is it any wonder that Sheehy quipped, "Who can embrace the larger meaning of life beyond youth when the most important thing in the world is still me?"

We were not prepared to become middle aged. Even the term was somehow offensive. We were the largest, the loudest, and the toughest. We were first in all kinds of categories, so how could we possibly be downgraded to the middle? Entering mid-life with the losses we perceived this stage to entail has a lot of us more then a little disoriented. Confronted with aching backs, bad knees, expensive dental work, new rules, new roles, and the dawning awareness that we too are really going to die has left us just a little bit shaken to say the least.

We, who at one time thought we had most of the answers and were very willing to share them, are now discovering more and more questions. And while we've generally become more sensitive to the needs and pain of others, we must also acknowledge that we're not as gifted as we perhaps once thought we were at handling the heartache of others, and even less skilled in dealing with our own.

Often we attempt to talk those we care about out of their painful feelings. If, on the other hand, it's we who are suffering, we tend to focus on the unfortunate aspects of our difficult situations, rather than acknowledge the opportunity those troublesome circumstances or feelings may present. We've generally only given lip service to that tired old cliche about making lemons into lemonade. We've never been particularly good at it anyway. We've been graced with a multitude of choices and a significant amount of control over much of our lives for so long that we've come to see these gifts as entitlements. And while Midlife offers tremendous benefits, it also confronts us with new and unsettling limits and losses that will inevitably (if they haven't already) cause us to experience some degree of suffering. Because suffering is unavoidable, (not because it's good for you) it becomes increasingly important to begin to come to terms with it.

THE STRENGTHENING...

"Those things that hurt, instruct." - Benjamin Franklin

When my daughter was around two years old, and seemingly in perpetual motion whenever her eyes were open, I came down with a very bad case of the flu. My husband was out of town. We had recently moved to the area, so I hadn't yet established a support system, and my family lived five hours away. I was on my own. I could barely move without the room spinning, or needing to vomit. In spite of her mother's incapacitation, my little girl's demands remained constant and her needs immediate. I knew I definitely wasn't equal to the task, and I was also aware that I had no choice but to do what I didn't believe I could do. I was miserable and felt more than a little self-pity. On the afternoon of the second day of my ordeal, a woman I hardly knew called regarding a meeting I was to attend the following week. She noticed that my voice was weak and shaky and asked with concern if I was all right. I told her I was ill and alone with my daughter and having a tough time of it. Her sympathy was comforting, but it was a single comment she made that left the greatest impact. She said, "Things like this are strengthening." I didn't think that she was minimizing my situation, or that she was offering a quick cliche before abandoning me to my own devices. Instead, I felt that she understood, that she herself had been strengthened as a result of experiencing and coping with a difficulty, and that she truly believed that I would be too. I hung up the phone and painfully began to make lunch for my daughter, who was demanding that I pick her up and play our daily lunch game. Her cries grew louder and louder when I refused to comply, and my nausea seemed to increase with each raised decibel. I began repeating silently over and over, "This is strengthening!" "This is strengthening!" "This is strengthening!" While my body remained unmoved, my spirits gradually began to lift.