The Wisdom of Midlife: Reclaim Your Passion, Power and Purpose

By Frank Natale

It is inevitable, between the ages of 39 and 55, that each of us will be confronted with a profound crisis of identity. “Now what?” we ask. The Wisdom of Midlife presents the opportunity to reclaim the passion, power and purpose we have either lost or denied. “The difficulty with this passage is that it is seen as a breakdown, an emotional and psychological failing,” Frank Natale writes. “Middle age is not the beginning of decline. This is a time to reach for the highest in our selves. Middle age is a pause to re-examine what we have done and what we will do in the future. This is the time to give birth to our power.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9780970144386

Book preview

Chapter 1

Prerequisites for the Mid-Birth Passage

In order to experience Mid-Birth we must first surrender our nature and destroy our magic. This is necessary to successfully pass the tests presented in the masculine-energy, hunter-dominated world of the workplace. At work in most of modern corporate culture we align with the masculine. We go into the world to compete and win. This passage occurs around age 26 and begins a journey that includes the passage Realization of Betrayal and on into Mid-Birth.

The Father Quest: Alignment with the Masculine

This is the time of slaying our dragons, making our mark on the world and being good enough. We begin to acquire practical power for the first time. We buy homes and launch businesses. Couples marry and start families. The young adult is born. Suddenly we focus on the material world, something we may have rejected in our early life. One of the most common complaints about fathers is that, He was not there enough. My response to this has always been, No, he wasn’t. If your father was there more he would have been your mother. When we separated from our nature we lost the symbols of the Earth, which are feminine and nurture us. When we move toward our father we move toward the Sun, which is masculine and protects and warms us from a distance.

During this passage we feel a need to come closer to our father. There is a desire to experience that relationship, to resolve and heal it, and in order to do that we must come closer to his way and to his point of view. As we begin to duplicate him we begin to understand and accept him. But, if we remain angry about his absence during our childhood or the way he parented us, then we get stuck in judging him and competing with him rather than healing these biased memories. This attitude of getting even with our father hurts us more than him as we miss the opportunity to become clear about important issues around authority, work values and the acquisition of skills.

Work is the way we contribute to the world, our family and community. It is a demonstration of all the skills we have learned since our birth. Work is how we show the world that we are capable and how the world is willing to compensate us. When we work with passion we lead ourselves to excellence. When we ignore this distinction we risk the worse fate possible, which is to become successful at something we hate. When we work with passion our work has purpose and direction. Otherwise we work solely out of our need to be accepted, out of not being good enough for daddy and mommy, wife, husband, children or our community. Instead of being self-determined we respond to everyone else’s needs. In doing so we are literally trying to be someone else, whether that’s our father, sports coach, business mentor or spiritual guru. Eventually we realize it’s a lot easier to follow our own passion and just be ourselves.

During this passage we become obsessed with the world of the masculine and start to think in terms of competition rather than cooperation. We value thinking more than feeling and surrender our basic instincts until we no longer trust our own feelings. Money, fame and power become our symbols of success. We loose track of old friends, blinded by what the new ones promise. We attempt to raise our children better than our parents raised us with the attitude of having to prove something rather than realize that this is what parents do for their children.

Eventually everything has a price. We begin to ask ourselves questions, What is the point to all of this? Is all this stuff really going to make me happy? Or is it just more stuff? Then, around the age of 39, our first Realization of Betrayal happens. At the time we believe we can control the physical, mental and emotional rollercoaster that follows. Later we discover we’re wrong and recognize that we have no control whatsoever and that this is just the first of a series of midlife crises.

The Realization of Betrayal: The Illusion of Success

Betrayal happens when we love and trust others more than ourselves. It happens when we project our hopes and dreams onto others with the expectation that they will save us in some way. It occurs when we become reckless to the point that our relationships loose respect for us and can’t handle the load we have placed upon them. Betrayal occurs when we are willing to be a victim. The Realization of Betrayal begins when we suspect that the rewards we have attached to success will not be delivered. We begin to question our values and the values of everyone around us. We start asking ourselves, For whom am I doing all of this?

While in the void of betrayal my experience was that I would lie around a lot and think about dying. I started projects, but within hours felt no energy for them. I was buried in midlife crisis. Business partners questioned my competence and family questioned my sanity. They were right and, although I loved them, I didn’t listen because these were the same people I wanted to let go.

Betrayal is easy to find. It runs rampant in affairs of the heart and is normal in most business relationships. To transcend this we discover the empowerment of honesty and integrity. It is not one major betrayal that causes us to question our life. It’s a gradual buildup of disappointments, broken promises, losses and unfulfilled expectations. The value in all of this is that it causes our redefinition of success. We begin to question everyone and everything in our life. What was once important disappears. We find ourselves surrounded by material possessions we no longer value and remain in exhausted relationships because we have become dependent upon them emotionally or financially.

We find ourselves in a void of nothingness where everything in and around us seems to be dying. Everything we have achieved is irrelevant, but worst of all there are no new pictures. We are stuck and unable to foresee anything in our future. We have questioned what we value many times in our life, but this is not what frightens us. What terrifies us is looking toward our future and seeing nothing except a profound sense of non-existence, which our un-evolved self perceives as death. We forget that it takes time to manifest new values. Such a complete letting go requires time to give form to our new values and