13. Welcome To Your Midlife Crisis!
The Year of Paying Attention
[February 2017.]
It’s as if my life were going in reverse. I’m done going to a job, and now I go to school and do homework. My classmates are in the Encore Transition Program, which meets in the hallowed halls of the Union Theological Seminary. It’s a workshop dreamed up by a smart colleague after the end of her high-flying career in advertising. Now she’s assembled a cohort of variously older folks to read and think and write and talk, about what we’re to do with the rest of our lives. Retiring lawyers, a minister, artists and teachers and professionals wrapping up careers, sharp and healthy, with plenty to offer a world that isn’t looking for them, all of us trying to figure out what now.
I doubt I’d have picked up Falling Upward if it wasn’t required reading, despite its small size and appealing cover, a picture of a stern wooden table and two-straight back churchy-looking chairs against a mottled wall, a supplicant’s cell. The Dr. Oz blurb on the back has a “give this book as a gift to some aging person who can’t deal” tone. (Another book on the list is The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully. Compression socks optional.)
Richard Rohr, the Falling author, has written more than twenty books, the bastard (sorry, Father). Oprah’s a fan. He’s the founder and director of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. Breaking Bad country. This book is subtitled A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. I appear to be in that second half. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but the gist is this — in the first half of one’s life, one forges an identity, taking one’s place in society, with work, family and responsibilities, all of which sets one up for the second half — making sense of all that experience, and pursuing wisdom.
You can’t do the second half until the first half is finished, Rohr says, and lots of folks never complete part one. He says you can’t explain the second half to people working on the first half. I think the term “midlife” is confusing, so I’ve worked out the language for myself: “mid-career” is when you start to regret your career decisions (Anesthesiology is so boring! I think I’d be a great Feldenkrais teacher!); “midlife” comes around the end of your career, when you imagine that by scrambling and wishing you’ll pack some meaning into what remains of your time on the planet, while increasing the roughage in your diet and accepting that you can’t read small print anymore, glasses or no glasses.
I’ve adopted a fundamental operating principle in my own life: ESI, or Enlightened Self Interest. With painstaking slowness that might be mistaken for sloth, I’ve noticed that most of my selfish or lazy behavior eventually makes me feel bad whereas doing something helpful usually makes me feel good. I’ve also learned the difference between people-pleasing and doing as I choose. These two activities can appear identical to an observer. How to tell the difference? Let’s say I swing by somebody’s hospital room with a bag of not-hospital food. If I’m annoyed when a container of Chinese grub doesn’t produce tears of gratitude from the guy with the shiny new titanium hip, my motives are self-centered. If on the other hand I’m simply happy to see my friend while perhaps eating most of his sesame noodles, that’s enlightened self interest. With a side of gluttony. He didn’t want them all, anyway, the new hip’s bothering him. The real test for me is noticing a generous or compassionate impulse, and sticking with it, backing it up with action before I can rationalize and distract myself and get back to what makes me feel bad, namely obsessing about myself, worrying, comparing, critiquing, and then despairing and opening wide the refrigerator door.
However, it’s not always easy to know what I want to do. The two 12-step programs I attend deal with different sides of a self-destructive behavior, driven by a “disease,” according to credentialed authorities. The “beverage” program is clear — I cannot drink safely (lots of proof), I will forget this fact (lots of proof), I will repeat the pattern and things will get worse, not better (lots of proof). When I try something different and take the suggestions of that program, I don’t drink, I don’t want to, I don’t forget I don’t want to, and I can restart the growing up process from where it stalled (when I started boozing it up too much), and maybe make up some lost time.
It’s the “feelings” program I sometimes find confusing. This program is for the people who are close to people like me, family and friends, all of whom have been affected by the problem drinker’s behavior, not just the drinking but the lying, the self-deception, the rage, the rationalizing, the blaming, the shame, the guilt, and on and on. People with a bad drinking problem make the people around them sick, and train them to think and act in unhealthy ways. The “feelings” program is designed to teach me a new way — and that’s what trips me up. Am I not supposed to help people in trouble? What do you mean not always? If someone is unhappy with me, it’s because of something I did or failed to do, isn’t it? What do you mean, no? When I can straighten out somebody’s mess, pick up the slack, isn’t that a way to show my love? And when that effort is unappreciated, and I feel hurt and angry — what do you mean it’s my fault? What the hell are you trying to tell me? So, yes, it’s not as easy as stopping drinking.
So when I think about flying south to see my friend JC, scheduling the trip to be there at the same time as our mutual friend Don, is it out of guilt? No, it’s not. I met JC more than forty years ago at WBUR, the jazz radio station where we both worked. We connected immediately. JC and Don were tight at Harvard, with a shared love of music and college hoops. Don became a buddy as soon as JC introduced us. We’d all get stoned, go out to live music, and had lots of friends in common. I’d been out of college for a while, living alone when JC suggested the three of us find an apartment together. I wondered if two Black guys and a white guy were going to have trouble convincing a landlord to rent to us, but we didn’t, moving into a second-floor three-bedroom (well, Don’s bedroom was a weatherized front porch, but he said he preferred it). We were roomates until Don went to California to graduate school. JC continued working in Boston radio, and I moved to New York. They both came to my wedding in Manhattan. Don moved home to work in New Orleans, and I started going to Jazzfest every spring, New Orleans’ annual music and food extravaganza. Don was on the Jazzfest board, and told us where to eat, what to see, where to go. The years rolled by.
Roughly a year ago, JC called me from Georgia to tell me Don was in a world of unimaginable trouble, which I’ll get into later. Then, just a few months ago, Don called to tell me JC was in the hospital, partially paralyzed. Don started driving back and forth between New Orleans and Athens, Georgia, eight hours each way, to help JC out. By this time, all three of us were divorced, and there didn’t seem to be a crowd of people ready to lend a hand to either of my friends.
Am I planning this trip because I think I’m supposed to? I know I’m afraid to see JC in his current condition, afraid of what’s become of him. I’m nervous to see Don, who’s coping with troubles I can’t imagine. This will not be a pleasure trip, but it’s one I want to make. Both of my friends are in a tight spot. The whole situation sucks. Nobody knows what’s going to happen, but one thing’s crystal clear — I’m going to Athens, Georgia to reconnect with two old friends.
Next week: You Don’t Have To Be Quiet
