According to Oscar Wilde, "Youth is wasted on the young". Mid-life can provide tremendous opportunities for personal growth and positive change. Many people acquire a wisdom, maturity and self-confidence they lacked earlier.
I read all this the other week and it sums up my current quest as I negotiate a couple of major transitions, age and losing my last parent and a general sense of my landscape changing and deciphering what in me has also changed, what is emerging from my self and what I can let go of. It's all been a bit of a muddle and confusing time, leaving me with the need to just sit and be with the changing thoughts and feelings and "plod" through the daily routines.
Now I feel a new kind of loss, the loss of my energy, verve and desire to connect socially, create and generally express myself in a more alive, natural and free way. I have felt guarded, protecting myself, healing and nurturing and now I open my eyes and look above the parapit and low and behold, a lot more has moved on, whilst I was moving through all of this! Damn, yet more disorientation.....reminds me a bit of starting University, entering a new world, intact, only yourself, a quick succession of decisions to make, this house to rent, these housemates, which spot in the canteen, which events to go to, who to make friends with, what to do with your grant money??? A time of new beginnings, a time of launching, testing out, becoming yourself. These are heartening memories for me to draw on, if I had not had these experiences and similar ones, i wonder if I would muster the courage to spread my wings into life once more, as there is a temptation and its not too hard, to remain coseted and "safe" when you feel the urge to step out but are too nervous.
At least at university there was no going back, it was easier somehow, there were lots of people doing the same, you could ride on the successes and benefits you saw others receive from "finding their way". After bereavement, in mid-life, there is nothing so tangible, not a clear step to take, a series of steps out and standing still, but noticing the urge is a good start and I hope I will find open doors to try out and equally create some of my own to give a go!
