Falling Inward at 40
Right around middle-age between the 30s and 50s, there’s a falling inward that coincides with a falling away of what we once thought to be true. At least that’s what I’ve observed in my own life.
After turning 40 earlier this year my life was upended with an incredible amount of change. I packed my bags and relocated to a new city after accepting a job at an agency I’d never heard of until the weeks leading up to my decision to apply. Within a matter of a few months I found myself slightly disoriented in a completely new environment, during one of the coldest Ontario winters we’ve seen in decades. With a lifetime spent working and living in a smaller urban environment, the Toronto skyscrapers seemed to swallow me from above as I first made my way south from the subway station to my new office. The frigid winter air further compelled me inward to protect myself from the fierce cold that blasted against any open skin.
Looking back on those first moments after relocating cities last winter, I can’t help but see how my life was being orchestrated as part of something much bigger. I entered a totally new chapter of my life. An older chapter of my youth that had officially come to a close. The winter became a perfect time to cloister myself in stillness between worlds - where I had been, and where I was going.
As we grow older, we are invited to let go of certain beliefs or behaviours that have already served its purpose. In a youth-obsessed world it can be hard to accept that by the time we reach middle-age the stamina, time, and opportunities afforded to us in our youth begin to ripen and show early signs of falling away. The task of aging gracefully is then to accept that we are as organic as nature, subject to the arc that life naturally takes like all living beings.
While the winters of our life are inevitable, as are endings, loss, and the shattering experiences of trauma, these experiences are often not what they first appear to be.
The culture that we’re steeped in might have us believe that loss is something to be feared and avoided. Nature demonstrates a very different view altogether. In the natural environment, endings are woven directly into the newness of life. It is true that when winters enter our life it signifies change and a letting go of how things used to be. There is an inevitable grief that encompasses our transitions through the coldest seasons of our lives before we arrive into the warmth of spring. At mid-life there is a similar invitation to grieve everything that hasn’t come to pass, and perhaps won’t, while opening to the unknown possibilities for a new phase of life.
As we enter the winter seasons of our life, more and more we can view those times as a period of stillness that invites us to fall deeper inward. One of the gifts of getting older is that our inner world can become more expansive through wisdom and deepening insight. The grace of getting older is in its capacity for mature wisdom - the ability to take inventory of the bigger picture. We develop a greater capacity for slowing down and looking inward.
The best we can do when the winter seasons of our lives arrive is to allow it to descend upon us. Not to resist the cool winter air by chasing warmer seasons of the past, but rather honouring its presence by seeking an inner place of refuge. Within that place of inner refuge and stillness we can allow the winter season to envelop the past entirely as we learn to fall further inward, going deeper into ourselves.
