Fifty is the New F
By Suzanne Braun Levine
Second Adulthood is all about change— the changes that befall us and those we generate. The first without the second creates a miasma of disappointment. The sec- ond, if it doesn’t incorporate the first, is frustrating and discouraging.
A restlessness that creates a nonspe- cific itch to make changes is behind much of our seemingly random and unpredictable behavior. That urge to bring new elements into the mix of our lives, combined with a simultane- ous desire to revise our established lifestyle, throws us off balance a lot of the time. Sometimes it is like falling down Alice’s rabbit hole: you don’t know which end is up. The free fall into the Fertile Void is alter- nately exhilarating and terrifying; any guideposts to help set your course when you emerge are few and far between, and there are no time- tables for any changes that you make from there on. The only imperative of the transition from the society- defined stages for women into the unprecedented and unexplored next stage is that each of us can— nay, must— begin to write her own script. Each player is unique. There are no roles. (There are no white knights either.) Some people catch fire with passion for a new life and others putt- putt along making small but very meaningful course adjustments. The changes need not be as dra- matic as parachuting out of a plane or as operatic as running off with the cable guy, but they will probably feel as momentous.
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Not long ago I joined twenty midlife women who had gotten together to ponder the question: What will I do with the rest of my life? Some- one asked for a show of hands from those who had a dream or a passion they couldn’t wait to get to. Only two hands went up, and the rest of us looked on enviously. How, we worried, could we move forward if we couldn’t identify a driving force:
reconsider What Matters in our lives; we just didn’t consider them big enough ideas. Those less torrid im- pulses are simply a different source of guidance: a pilot light. A flame that doesn’t consume but doesn’t burn out either, it literally pilots us through the shoals and currents of our new stage of life.
A pilot light of any intensity is ignited by discarding shoulda-woulda-coulda thinking. That includes accumulated baggage, especially expectations— about yourself, about others, about how your life is “supposed” to be. So what if you have never been an outdoor person? So what if you have always been counted on to take the minutes at a meeting? So what if you have always been so dignified? So what if you have gone to work in an office every day of your life? That was then. Now is now. Once the un- necessary carry-on is set down, it is much easier to take off into the wild blue yonder.
like the desire to write a novel or start a business or to sail around the world by balloon? As we commiser- ated, those of us with no grand pas- sion heard ourselves admit to inner voices that whisper, “Do this” and simmering interests that are heating up now that we are letting ourselves
June/July 2010
Which is not necessarily a literal rec- ommendation. While some women can redesign their lives from top to bottom— and keep on doing it— most of us can only manage small changes at first. Going back to school can be too big an undertaking right now; try exchanging a regular TV show for the crossword puzzle every night. Opening a craft store would be fun, but maybe all you can handle for the moment is a pair of knitting needles and an evening at the local yarn shop with others in the
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