Midlife Courage: Transitioning Uncertainty with a Spirit of Adventure part1

In our fast-paced, multitasking lifestyles, where most of us over-40s struggle to get from one task to the next, a concept like courage seems a bit out of place. Courage in today's society might be an attribute best left to our growing passive experiences of movies, DVD rentals, reality TV, or an exciting novel. What need is there for courage in us Baby Boomers who have been dubbed "the privileged generation"? What are the costs of keeping courage as a strictly passive activity? What are ways to activate courage?

What is courage?

First of all, what is courage? Courage is the ability to confront fear, pain, danger and uncertainty. Courage is defined differently for everyone. Some might see courage as lacking fear in a situation that normally would trigger it. Some might even consider a courageous act to be reckless. At the heart of courage is the ability to confront. Confrontation is something most of us shy away from, and yet fear, pain and uncertainty are a part of life for people over 40.

"At midlife, the part of ourselves that we have known, the caterpillar, is in essence disintegrating. We are stepping into the abyss without a clue as to where we will emerge from it. We are leaving behind what we have known ourselves to be and all the safe and predictable containers of that reality," writes Kathleen Brehony in Awakening at Midlife. How frightening, uncertain, and painful is that?

My own story is an example of stepping into the abyss. At the age of 47, I was a long-time single woman with my children off creating their own lives. I had a middle-class life with a nice house, a great but stressful job, and a 401K. I did not, however, know the woman who looked back at me in the mirror.

I could have made several choices. The first would have been to keep working hard and ignore the inner rumbling, and for a while, I did just that. I kept doing what I was doing. Then a friend of mine was diagnosed with terminal cancer and I was overcome with emotion that was very personal. I was concerned for her; but I was equally concerned with ME. What if that were me? What about my unlived life?

I was scared. I was in pain. I did not like the place where I was, feeling uncertain. I call this "walking through the valley." I needed to go deep within myself for the courage to confront the fear, uncertainty and pain. I found my courage through discovering my own spirit of adventure.

The spirit of adventure

Jeff Saltz in The Way of Adventure says, "Adventure is any intentional experience that substantially alters our perspective long enough to see things we have never seen before--to see familiar things in ways we have never seen them. The most exotic destination of all is the one that fulfills all your yearnings--found within your own adventurous spirit--after you've put yourself to the test and found hidden reserves of creativity, resourcefulness, and perseverance."

Sounds exciting, eh? Perhaps in theory...but how do we really do this?

Take a leap of faith. If you always do what you've always done, you get the same outcomes. Deep within you, you know what you want to do. It's the action that makes the difference. Joseph Campbell writes in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, "A hero ventures from the world of the common day into a region of supernatural wonder."

Connie was a 51-year-old divorced mother of two grown children. She had worked for years teaching elementary school because it was a good income and gave her summers and school holidays off. She had to admit, however, that her heart had gone from teaching for the previous few years. Bureaucracy and changes in the education culture had driven Connie to dread weekdays and long for weekends. She worked harder at trying to "love her work," doing gratitude journaling and starting a teacher's support group. The problem was, she felt worse, not better, from her efforts.

That winter, Connie got a cold that turned to pneumonia and required bed rest for several days. During that time, she started journaling her thoughts, and came to a realization that her job was making her sick. She recognized that she no longer "needed" the things teaching once brought to her. She began to focus instead on what she did need.

Connie wanted to write and express herself. At the end of school term, she put in her notice and spent the summer in a writing course. She then went to work as a librarian four days a week and began to do freelance writing on a part-time basis. Today, four short years later, Nancy has ongoing jobs as a freelance writer, and has co-written and published a book on helping children to read through common parent-child activities.

Where is your leap of faith? What needs to change to allow barriers to lift?

Appreciate Adversity. Buddhists say that we learn our life lessons by way of our life changes. Life events cause us to change in order to deal with them. By midlife, we can look back at our journey and get an appreciation for just how we have had to adapt.