Midlife care for the soul

Katie van Schaijik | Apr 12, 2010

I read an article in the Daily Mail today, which I won’t link directly, because of the surrounding sleaze.  It was about mid-life crises—how common they are and how they can be an essential turning point.  (According to the article, the term ‘midlife crisis’ was coined by Canadian Elliott Jaques to describe dramatic self-doubt in the middle age of life.)
I liked its conclusion.

Previously, she had always been manically busy - with work and motherhood. She had no time to think things over. Then, all of a sudden, with no job and an empty nest, she had nothing but days and nights of endless unfilled time.

‘And what was I so afraid of?’ she asks. ‘Being alone with myself long enough to wonder what is the purpose of my life?’
Like Shapiro, she embarked on a long and often painful journey. Though neither was religious, both found solace and comfort in re-discovering the religious teachings of their childhoods.
In addition, Browning began to appreciate what she describes as the ‘small beauty in every single day’.
‘One adventure is over; it is time for another,’ she writes. ‘I am growing into a new season. I am not old and not young; not broken and yet not quite whole. These are my intertidal years.’
Browning says that in the aftermath of her crisis, she re-connected with something she had encountered as a teenager and then lost in the frantic skim through adulthood - ‘the desire to nourish my soul’.
Both of the friends I mentioned earlier said they feel as if they don’t know who they are any more. It is as if their souls are crying out for some attention.
Only time will tell if they will listen to that call from within. I know many people have trouble with this kind of thing. It’s about taking a little time out of the rat-race and reconnecting with the lost child within all of us.

It could also be an advertising slogan for the Personalist Project: “Built for those who desire to nourish their souls.”