A few weeks ago, I was facilitating a session on goal setting and personal branding for a group of ladies in their early and mid-thirties. After the session the chair of the group requested each person to introduce themselves. They obviously knew each other since they are friends from campus and have now formed an investment company which also offers lending services. Needless to say, they are all in good careers and maybe happy with their families.
One of the ladies said “I don’t know whom I am,” before she continued the rest interjected are you not a mother, wife and a finance professional? That had been the beginning of most of the introductions made. She continued “I want to start all over again, I am 35, I am not sure who I am. This year I don’t want to be a mother or wife, I want to find myself and I believe it is not too late.” Noting that she was a new mother left me thinking.
As I was leaving a few ladies followed me and they all seemed to have a similar feeling. They have good jobs, good families and friends apart from a few normal complaints about spouses and mother in laws. They feel low and empty quite often. They have contemplated quitting their jobs and pursue something different, but they have financial obligations to meet. Some want to quit for their children, others want to quit for their own sanity and peace of mind. Is quitting the ultimate solution?
There is something uniquely frustrating when everything in your life looks great but you are miserable and sad anyway. You actually look like you do not have the right to feel low because you have everything the society considers good and everything you considered as success. The tricky part is figuring out just what is wrong and what to do about it.
One of the common answer in the 21st century is that we do not live for anything. Our lives revolve around giving our time and energy to make money for other people. We get advertisements for supplements, diets, gadgets all that promise to give us an edge at work or make us more productive. We do not hear about how we can reconnect with our passions, hobbies, friends, family or community.
Until one day we wake up and realize that half our lives have gone by in a blur and we have nothing unique to show for it or live for. We do not have the things that make life meaningful or things that we strive for that are bigger than us.
In the words from the American film, Fight Club “We are the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no great war, No great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war, our Great Depression is our lives”. We may have a few things to fight like the corona virus pandemic and the resulting economic effects but that statement from the film fight club speaks to the lack that so many of us feel.
Many people are waiting for something or someone to give them that purpose, but what they need to do is to go and find that which makes them feel alive. It may be as simple as maintaining a garden or as abstract as advocating for climate change. All it needs to be is something that brings you satisfaction into your life. Something that lets you feel that you are part of something that is doing good to the world around you.
Get more in touch with your own mind and your own identity. Get help if you need to. Just don’t go through all your life in a blur. Because people call what happens at midlife a crisis, but it’s not. “It’s an unravelling, a time when you feel a desperate pull to live. A time when you are challenged by the universe to let go of who you think you are supposed to be and to embrace who you are.”