I receive a lot of emails from wives whose husbands have left them or are discovered having an affair.  “He must be having a midlife crisis”.

Is it?  In a NY Times article, Dr Richard Friedman, a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, challenges the notion. In discussing one case similar to the emails I mentioned, he described it as “this was a garden-variety case of a middle-aged narcissist grappling with the biggest insult he had ever faced: getting older.

He goes on to write, “Why do we have to label a common reaction of the male species to one of life’s challenges — the boredom of the routine — as a crisis? True, men are generally more novelty-seeking than women, but they certainly can decide what they do with their impulses.”

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A friend sent me this. It is a gift of great wisdom and relevant to working with the Disquiet. I thought it appropriate to share in its entirety at Thanksgiving. Jose Stevens is a healer, shaman and teacher.

The Human ToolBox
by Jose Stevens

The human experience comes with a secret toolbox preloaded with three exceptional tools for healing and accelerating growth. These tools are user friendly and quite ordinary but are often overlooked as being simplistic and not respectable, especially in the world of science and particularly in the field of Western Psychology. Even those who know about the tools tend to misinterpret them or fail to understand their true significance. So here in this article we are going to focus on these three tools and explore the territory covered by each.

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Jean Browman, at Happy Monk, posted an article that caught my eye after she sent me the link (Thanks Jean!). She is kicking off an important discussion that I want to grow here as well. So I posted part of her article below and threw in my 2 cents. I’d like your thoughts as well.

At Home In the Universe

Like all of my [Jean's] posts, this one is presented as food for thought, and hopefully to start a conversation. Does this picture resonate with you at all? For instance, have you ever felt you looked at things differently from other people…that a part of you was alone in the universe? If so, what was your reaction? Were you frightened… depressed… exhilarated… lonely? What did you do?

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My client was really struggling with feeling lost in his life. A senior executive, he had a successful career, healthy family, a huge house in the country, took vacations…he had all that comes with the good life. The American Dream. And he felt absolutely dead inside. A zombie.

If you read my site you will learn about a particular aspect of Disquiet: one which emerges when someone is at the top of their game, has all the trappings of having made it, and yet, does not feel connected to that success.

Often they feel nothing, dead inside. They have long forgotten why they worked so hard to get what they dreamed of and now feel no sense of accomplishment or satisfaction. I have found this theme among many of my clients. I call it the Empty Success Syndromeâ„¢.

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I am repeatedly amazed at the power of the blog. In the 10 months and 110 posts, I have heard from people from all around the world. Almost 400 comments have been posted here. And I have received hundreds of emails.

The Disquiet has hit a nerve. People resonate with it. Men are nodding in recognition to their struggle with it. Women see it in the men in their lives. (more…)

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“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation” -Henry David Thoreau

That greets you on the home page to this site.  I think that captures the Disquiet beautifully.

But it’s not the whole story.  There is another aspect to the suffering with the Disquiet.  That’s what I call “magical thinking”.   When I was up to my ears in hating my job and my life, I kept steeling myself each day by muttering to myself through clinched teeth that all the suffering was for the future.  If I kept plugging away, I would then have enough money, seniority, retirement, or something that would allow me to live my life on my terms.

Sounds pretty puritanical doesn’t it?  Live a life of Hell to get rewarded in the afterlife.

I hear this in many of my clients as well.  When our sense of OK’ness and success is so dependent on external factors, we are doomed to a living Hell.

It just does not work that way.  First of all, life doesn’t turn around and pay you a bonus for being miserable, like frequent flier miles for suffering.  For those who view life as something to survive, it will be just that - a never ending sequence of disasters and hardships to navigate.  For those who can learn to see that life ‘lives’ through us, there is another way to experience and relate to life.  It is about now, this moment.

David Deida in his book, “The Way of the Superior Man“, writes:

Most men make the error of thinking that one day it will be done.  They think, “If I can work enough, then one day I could rest.”  Or, “One day my woman will understand something and then stop complaining.”  Or, “I’m only doing this now so that one day I can do what I really want with my life.”  The masculine error is to think that eventually things will be different in some fundamental way.  They won’t.  It never ends.  As long as life continues, the creative challenge is to tussle, play, and make love with the present moment while giving your unique gift”.

So don’t wait until the kids are off to college, or retirement, or some other external guidepost to begin living.  Life is very very short and it’s waiting to live through you now.
Oh, and by the way, read David’s book - it is a great navigational aide for navigating your Disquiet.

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