37 Quotes About Midlife

Gen Xers are in 'the prime of their lives' at a particularly dangerous and divisive moment,' Boomer marketing expert Faith Popcorn told me. 'They have been hit hard financially and dismissed culturally. They have tons of debt. They're squeezed on both sides by children and aging parents. The grim state of adulthood is hitting them hard. If they're exhausted and bewildered, they have every reason to feel that way.

Our brains resist change, they rail against it, our amygdala will always want the safe bet. But are the obstacles truly insurmountable? Is it a brick wall? Or is it a sliding door, which, once you decide to approach it, begins to swish open? Because even though our brains prefer safety in the short run, in the long run they crave meaning, challenge, and novelty.

But what the measured prose of psychiatrists and the carefully calculated statistics of social scientists rarely capture is the experience of inner struggle. These "significant changes" do not occur automatically. In fact, they must often fight against our resistance. In this sense, midlife is a drama more worthy of a playwright than a scholar. We are characters in the play, caught at the opening of the second act, and we do not know what will happen next.

We watch our bodies and our brains slow down as younger bodies and brains zip past us, and we just accept it, not realizing there is a whole world offering to sharpen and improve us. We simply need to look for it.

Durning the years when we were carelessly dismissing what we later came to see as the most important things in life, we kept crying out woefully that we were looking for meaning. All that time we were starved for meaning, we were lacking it for no other reason than we weren't ascribing meaning to the situations right in front of us! meaning isn't what a situation gives us; its what we give to a situation.

Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.

How many of those who are insecure seek power over others as a compensation for inadequacy and wind up bringing consequences down upon their heads and those around them? How many hide out in their lives, resist the summons to show up, or live fugitive lives, jealous, projecting onto others, and then wonder why nothing ever really feels quite right. How many proffer compliance with the other, buying peace at the price of soul, and wind up with neither?

It’s not so much that we are losing our identities, but rather that we are no longer embracing false identities. If we hold on to what once defined us, we will miss out on the authentic identity we are being called to.

Even if you do not want to, One day you will look back through your life...the Question is, what are you going to see? How will your rate and direction of progress make you feel?