A New Year’s Resolution for the Middle of Life

There must be a word that describes this experience: when it’s the morning of Jan 2^nd and you’re getting ready to go back to work and you open your closet and, in the light of the brand-new year, see the same shabby clothes that ended the year before.

For me, the moment elicited a familiar mix of shame and anxiety: a feeling that I should have done better—others’ surely have. And a conviction that whatever presentation I might muster would be out-of-date, wrinkled, and broadcast my failures and fears for all to see.

But, I also felt embarrassed to be feeling this way. That is, my embarrassment with myself was itself embarrassing. While I was be coming up short according to those certain judges and critics lodged in my mind, something about the shame didn’t sit right.

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When I turned forty-four, I had the distinct impression of arriving at the middle of my life. I felt I could hope to have ahead of me about the same number of years—plus or minus—as had passed before. My birthday was in the summer. That day, I took my young daughters to the playground, and we climbed on the seesaw. I sat at one end and the two of them, squealing with delight, scrambled to the other. Despite their best efforts, they failed to tip me up. This felt symbolic.

What does one do at the middle of life? How to mark this moment? What should change? A friend of mine once shared with me a concept of adulthood that he’d been taught by his BaKongo grandparents as part of an education in their traditions and culture. To be an adult, he conveyed, is to be a pillar holding up the community. It means providing others with value, shelter, and space to grow. That is, to become an adult you take what you have and what you’re made of and put it to service so others might also thrive.

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When I peer into my closet, I see clothes I don’t wear anymore because they don’t fit; clothes I have never worn because the circumstances I envision as worthy of their wearing hasn’t happened; and clothes I wear year after year after year, regardless how fashions change. I see wool skirts I shrank by washing them improperly but keep because they worked so well, once. And sweaters that are misshapen and unflattering but I don’t know how to get rid of. And dresses that look nice from a distance but, up close, reveal pilled fabric and frayed sleeves.

Here I am, in the middle of my life, and I’m full of insecurities I’ve dragged along with me for decades. I have regrets over the many ways those insecurities shaped my actions and inactions. I am envious when I scroll social media and see my peers’ pictures from trips to Portugal and Puerto Rico, their positions and promotions. I’m petrified I’ll never fulfill my potential but also dismayed at how I still crave affirmation and approval. I worry that I am so bad at contentment.

The blinds are pulled high—the bright sun of a new year slants across the dust motes and cracked paint—and the experiences, memories, and meaning of what I’ve been and what I’ve done. This is what I have to work with. This is the material with which to forge a pillar. It is time.

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I am enduringly fascinated by perspective—how a shift in point of view can radically change the truths we inhabit.

And what has been dawning on me is a recognition of value. That in this messy middle of life—full of relics from other eras, wholly different than the expectations and aspirations of my youth, an unglamorous mix of failures and doubts and fears—that in this, is my adulthood. In this I find what I have to give to my community.

How amazing the transformative potential of gratitude. How it invites awe at the complexity, a sense of liberation in the ordinary and curiosity about what others might actually be, rather than how we—I—think them to be. Bathed in new light, I am seeing new meaning. And new work to do.

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