Midlife Magic: Seeing the Beauty in Impermanence
Nothing lasts forever. Can we find beauty in that truth?
Midlife can be a hot mess. Shifts in relationships, careers, family relationships, and our own bodies can create upheaval and turmoil. And yet, there can be rich growth that comes from all this upheaval. It can be hard to see up close, but at the 10,000 foot view, maybe we can get a better look at what’s beautiful and possible.
Impermanence
Nothing in this world lasts forever. By the time we get to midlife, most of us have been pushed past the denial of this fact, whether we liked it or not. Beloved pets die, relationships end, our bodies change, we might lose jobs or homes or any number of things. Usually, we hate this. We all want to keep what is good and avoid loss and pain. Losing what we love, and have grown attached to, hurts. Sometimes it hurts so badly that we try to outsmart the truth of impermanence by taking control of the situation and breaking our own hearts before they can be broken—ending a relationship that is very good but you fear won’t last forever; giving up a cherished activity because you’ll never be able to be great at it or earn a living at it; dampening our own sparks of desire because we are afraid that they will burn like a devastating wildfire if we don’t. Sadly, this doesn’t prevent our pain but often just kicks the can down the road, making our worlds smaller and less vibrant as we go, so as to not rock the boat. But then we wonder what happened when we end up at a standstill in the water.
Thinking, Feeling, doing
I spend a lot of time in my head and in my heart—thinking, planning, strategizing, feeling, relating, attuning. All that helps me in many of the things that are important to me—my work, my family life, my relationships. But sometimes it can get unbalanced if I’m not adding enough focus to being in my body—doing, creating, sensing, experiencing. In the doing, I’m right here in the present—moment to moment, everything changing. Things arise and pass away and I’m fully involved in the process of it, knowing it is happening now and will also end, allowing a new Now to arise. Pretty much all of my free time activities and hobbies are about doing— using my body to engage with life in the present moment—yoga, dancing, outdoor activities, knitting, baking, glass art, pottery. I need a lot of repeated experience with something to get the truth of it in my bones sometimes—these activities continuously remind me of the inevitability of impermanence and how to work with it.
The Bowl Is Already Broken
For me, creating pottery is pretty much one long meditation on impermanence. Clay comes out of the ground and we use water and pressure to shape it into forms that are hardened by heat but will, given enough time, eventually deteriorate again and go back to the earth. And it can all go wrong at in every possible moment. The bowl wobbles out of balance on the wheel and collapses; or it cracks in the trimming and shaping process later; or it explodes in the kiln; or it comes out beautiful and lovely and eventually breaks when it slips out of my hand and cracks open on the ground. As someone who does this as a casual hobby, I’m not great at it and my rate of success of a lovely finished product is not super high, meaning I end up with far more misses than hits. But that’s ok because, for me, that’s not the point. I have zero interest in trying out a new career as a potter. I don’t need to make sure I can create enough bowls so my family can have a place to hold their food for meals. This is doing for the sake of doing. Two ideas I’ve heard keep me going.
#1 “The glass is already broken”. From Mark Epstein’s book, Thoughts Without A Thinker: Psychotherapy From a Buddhist Perspective:
“You see this goblet?" asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master. "For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, 'Of course.' When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious."
I love this. When we can be at peace with the fact that all things things come and go, we can lean into the delight of enjoying them while we can and letting them go when it’s over. This goes for everything, not just material objects. How many hours have many of us spent, during our long awaited vacations, being sad about the fact that the vacation would eventually end? How many times have we broken our own hearts by prematurely giving up on something (a dream, a passion, a relationship) because we knew it wouldn’t last forever and couldn’t bear the thought of that? If we can accept the fact of impermanence, we can be free to bring our whole hearts to the moment and really be here for our lives as the moments come and go, come and go, come and go.
#2 “Anything worth doing is worth doing half-assed”.
The wisest, kindest, most skilled psychiatrist I ever worked with told me this idea when I was in my first therapist job out of graduate school. I had been raised with the idea of, “Anything that’s worth doing is worth doing right”, and I absorbed that into every cell of my being. So, my knee-jerk reaction to this alternative view was not positive. But it was so unlike anything that I had ever heard before that I had to know more. How in the world did this make sense to him?
His belief was that things that are truly worth doing are worth doing just for the sake of doing them—whether you are good at them or not, whether you can fully commit to them or not, whether you think they’ll be long lasting or not. If you love to sing, then sing. If you love to write, then write. If you love to play tennis, then play tennis. It doesn’t matter if anyone else thinks it’s any good, or if it’s “productive”, or if you get any better at it or not. It is no exaggeration to say that this idea changed my life. I can’t tell you how many things that I prematurely discarded because I wasn’t going to be great at them or make a living at them or “be productive” with them. What a gift to learn that I didn’t have to do that anymore. All those “doing” activities I enjoy in my free time—I’m not all that great at any of them. It is highly unlikely I’ll ever knit a sweater or create a ceramic teapot or bake an illusion cake. That’s fine! The beauty is in the doing, the NOW, this moment of enjoyment in creating something, even if it doesn’t turn out or last. It’s worth doing.
Leveling up With LOss In Midlife
Now that’s all well and good when it’s a bowl that breaks or a cake that falls but when we’re talking about impermanence there is no getting around the fact that we are talking about the inevitable facts that our bodies will all age and die. By the time we get to midlife, we are likely acutely aware of this fact. We will lose everything we hold dear in life, including our own lives. How in the world do we make peace with that? Many of us will try to deny and ignore this for as long as possible. But, eventually, there comes the time when we can’t ignore it anymore. Do we numb out with substances, materialism or extreme experiences? We could. But it won’t change the facts. If impermanence is inevitable, we are best served by getting used to it little by little. Don’t wait until you are thrown in the deep end of sudden loss, if you can help it. Start with the everyday—the last bite of cake, the vacation, the final episode in a series you’ve watched for years, the vase that you really liked that’s now shattered on the ground. Can we be gentle and generous with ourselves in these moments, enjoying the NOW and letting go of it, once it’s in the rearview mirror and another NOW has taken its place? This is learning that will keep going until our very last moment, so it’s ok if we aren’t great at it and are slow learners here. It’s still worth trying.
A free consultation for therapy in Maryland
If you are looking for support in making your way through midlife, or other stages of life, please reach out and connect with me. I see folks in my office in College Park and online throughout Maryland. You can explore more information about my services as a Maryland therapist throughout the website and feel free to contact me for a free 15 minute phone consultation.
