Midlife Matters with H. Les Brown

Midlife Matters with H. Les Brown

Every Change is a Little Death

I’m changing. It’s not too late, and I’m not too old. In fact, the opposite is true. I just put the finishing touches on a course lesson I’m creating on the subject of change. When most people think of change, they probably look forward with a sense either of anticipation, or a sense of uneasiness, or even a sense of dread toward what’s coming. I sort of doubt that when people think of change, they’re aware that it’s their connection to the past that will surprise them with the ‘gotcha’ that they’ll eventually have to deal with.

I’m very fond of writing in my articles about the midlife transition. The term serves my purpose to separate the idea of change from one stage of life to the next (adulthood to maturity) from the popular conception of a midlife ‘crisis.’ Transition implies change, but it doesn’t necessarily mean traumatic change. And yet, the word ‘transition’ is not the most accurate word that I can use to describe what’s happening. Midlife involves much less of a ‘transition’ than it does a transformation, and, regardless of how easily or well-done that transformation may be, it will necessarily involve dying a little bit and therefore, grief. You don’t have to go through a crisis to feel pain, and you don’t have to suffer a tragedy to experience grief. Here’s how it works.

When we talk about a transition, we are referring to the way that we move from place to place or condition to condition or stage of life to stage of life. In that sense, midlife is certainly a ‘transition.’ It’s the time of life that we move from mere (self-interested) adulthood to full (self-possessed) maturity. However, midlife is much more. Just like in adolescence, midlife is a time of transformation. Transition implies a change of place; transformation refers to a change of being. When an entity changes in the sense of transformation, it has to leave behind part of what it was so that it can become something different. That’s exactly what people experience at midlife: when you transform into full maturity, you necessarily need to leave behind you huge chunks of yourself that made up the ‘adult.’ In that sense, you can never go home anymore (any more than, as an adult, you could go ‘home’ to childhood).

Although there are parallels between the transformation from child to adult and the one that takes you from adult to maturity, there are big differences, too. Childhood is a time of apprenticeship for life, and, by the time we reach the teenage years, we’re more than anxious to leave that stage behind to experience the full emancipation that comes with being an adult. At midlife, however, we enjoyed being an adult, and the benefits of maturity are often well-masked beneath the veneer of aging. People in our culture generally approach midlife with a sense of anxiety, at best. What we were anxious to leave behind in our transformation from child to adult, we’re not sure that we want to let go of, going from adult to maturity.

Consider the trap that awaits the adult on the verge of maturity. There are many things about adulthood that are wonderful: the physical strength and stamina, the sexual drive, the capacity to endure hardship and high stress with few obvious consequences, the thrill of new relationships, new commitments, new experiences, new opportunities, new challenges, all leading to a new sense of empowerment and self-esteem. What’s not to love about being an adult?

Now, contrast that with what the adult understands about maturity. She or he sees physical decline and fatigue, a blunted sex drive, the onset of chronic illness, stale relationships, breakups, boredom, an uncertain future, a sense of renewed dependence, all leading (it appears) to a sense of weakness and obsolescence. What’s not to dread about maturity?

Behold the mental and emotional trap! Although both adolescence and midlife involve a transformation that requires us to leave something behind, the losses involved in adolescence is masked with the opportunities to come, while the losses that come with midlife are heightened by our perception of the perceived decline that we will have to face. That’s why, at midlife, we begin to feel the pain that arises from a sense of acute loss. We grieve the losses of midlife in a way that we never grieved the losses of adolescence, although both changes involved a for us a little death. In fact, it’s only at midlife that most people really begin the process of grieving for the loss of childhood ‘innocence.’

I’ll repeat what I said before: every change — every transformation — involves a death, a loss, the consequent pain and entrance into the grieving process. Every time we lose a part of ourselves, a part that we loved and valued, we have to undergo the sometimes-painful process of letting it go and leaving it behind. Although these little ‘deaths’ are very necessary (they make room for whatever is yet to come), they exact a price.

That’s why it’s so important to begin the conscious entry into the midlife transformation by understanding and embracing your grief. As Elizabeth Kübler-Ross demonstrated, grief has five well-defined stages that each person passes through at his or her own speed. When we understand what’s happening to us during this transformation, it begins to make more sense and we gain the opportunity to work with the process rather than fighting it or denying it altogether. Only when we can appropriately grieve our perceived losses at midlife can we more clearly see the less obvious but extremely significant gains that maturity brings to us. For those of us on the other side of the ‘midlife divide,’ it seems that what had to die (and to be grieved) from adulthood was a small price indeed to pay for the spiritual, mental, and emotional gains we’ve made since moving into maturity.

Every change is a little death. Every death is followed by grief. All grief is a process of surrender that we must walk through to get to the other side. The surrender of what has been — and what might have been — to what is and what will be constitutes the essence of faith in a Power greater than ourselves that will unfailingly carry us through each ‘little death’ and into every new phase or dimension of our human existence. This ‘passover’ that we experience in big and little ways every day of our lives serves as our promise of constant renewal (at an ever-deeper level of our humanity), regardless of the apparent cost. The great Truth that midlife serves to teach each one of us who is open to listen and learn is that in our surrender of what was or might have been, we will find our hope for what will be.


About H. Les Brown
H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC grew up in an entrepreneurial family and has been an entrepreneur for most of his life. He is the author of The Frazzled Entrepreneur's Guide to Having It All. Les is a certified Franklin Covey coach and a certified Marshall Goldsmith Leadership Effectiveness coach. He has Masters Degrees in philosophy and theology from the University of Ottawa. His experience includes ten years in the ministry and over fifteen years in corporate management. His expertise as an innovator and change strategist has enabled him to develop a program that allows his clients to effect deep and lasting change in their personal and professional lives. Subscribe to his FREE Weekly e-Zine Midlife Matters at http://www.proactivation.org/!

Publisher's Note:
Les' MidLife Matters column appears on BB[KC] of the first Tuesday of every month. Les is a member of our Boomer Authority community of experts.