DO YOU FEEL IT? DO YOU FEAR OR WELCOME CHANGE?
Second Adulthood is all about change. It’s about a restlessness that creates a non-specific “itch” to make changes. Life in the Fertile Void, as I call this period, may feel like a free fall; it is alternately exhilarating and terrifying.
The changes you choose to make may not be as dramatic as parachuting out of a plane or as operatic as running off with the cable guy, but they will probably feel as momentous. Though some women are overcome with a burning passion to do something really big, others of us follow a small steady “Pilot Light” to self-discovery. Whether you redesign your life from top to bottom — and keep on doing it – or you can only manage small changes at first, you will find yourself recalibrating your life in exciting new ways.
FIFTY IS THE NEW FIFTY: Lesson Three: “Nothing Changes if Nothing Changes.” Here is what you do NOT have to do – though you may find out you want to…
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• Leave Your Job
• Leave Your Partner
• Leave the Country
• Leave Your Senses
• Leave Your Body
Let me explain:
Leave Your Job – Many women sense a loss of professional drive as they move toward their fifties and worry that there is something wrong with them. But it may just be that you have reached a job that suits you or that you are ready to shift gears from climbing the ladder to settling on a plateau of accomplishment.
Leave Your Partner – In Second Adulthood, changes are taking place in both partners that may make couples more compatible now than they have ever been. As women experience a renewed curiosity about themselves, they often experience a renewed curiosity in the partner they thought they knew so well.
Leave the Country – The most commonly voice all-purpose passion is travel. But many women don’t really want to leave their (newly empty) nests; instead they want to feather them with cozy experiences and newfound intimacy. Others may want to make more internal, spiritual journeys. And still others may find that their local communities hold unexplored wonders and possibilities.
Leave Your Senses – Learning to scuba dive, taking up Chinese, or moving into a yurt may sound like just the high-intensity transformation you need, but you may also find that taking tango lessons, putting together a family tree, or planning a cousins’ reunion becomes the first step toward the rest of your life.
Leave Your Body – Our bodies are the front line in the confrontation with aging, but when the showdown is getting nasty, just imagine how many good laughs we would miss if our bodies were giving us so much hilarious material. Sure, it would be great to lose those twenty pounds, and it might feel very daring to let the gray grow in or get plastic surgery. On the other hand that might make you fell less like your true self than you do now. Only you can tell which it is. Maybe a regular pedicure or a new hair style will be all the transformation you need.
A common problem we often have is that we defeat ourselves before we start by replacing old unrealistic expectations with new ones. What matters – very much – is the deceptively simple insight that nothing changes, if nothing changes. Breaking one old pattern sets everything else in motion.
Have you felt this restlessness? Have you made changes large or small in your life?