IT IS TOUGH, BUT IT IS GREAT, LIFE DOES NOT END AT 40
Last week we saw the dilemma that Paritosh was facing. He has to develop an understanding of the human life cycle and his position in it. Although the mental change is slow and imperceptible, without a sense of disruption, it does have a very powerful intrapsychic influence. There are many conditions, which need to be accepted and integrated in order to achieve fulfillment. Money and possessions have limited intrinsic value. They are a means to an end, tools for enriching life and improving your condition. Ownership of tangible objects is temporary, sooner or later; they will be given away, lost or left behind. The basic issue involving money should be to earn enough to meet the simultaneous demands to cover your daily expenses, provide your children with the opportunity to pursue higher education, care for your aging parents and so that you can enjoy life in the present while providing for a secure old age. Your body has to be cared for through exercise, proper diet and prompt treatment in sickness. Thoughts and feelings about your aging body will become a dominant influence on your mental life. Your efforts should be to remain trim and fit not to develop a sense of identity as in youth, but for the reason that you can enjoy all the pleasures of this phase only if your body supports you. It is a painful process to constantly monitor the physical changes in your body and it often leads to a conflict between the wishes to deny the effects of aging and the need to accept the loss of a youthful body. A proper balance has to be achieved between remaining alone with oneself (and being content with it) and requiring the sustaining presence of others. The basic characteristic of human relationships is to exist in a framework of interdependence. You have to strike a balance between your personal needs and those of others punctuated by caring and mutuality and letting go of control and dominance. Your significant relationships in life will shift in nature and realign. Intimacy, love and commitment are related to the mastery of the relationships most immediate to your personal experience. The focus is on maintaining intimacy in the face of deterring physical, psychological and environmental pressures. These pressures include real and imaginary concerns about diminished sexual capacity, emotional withdrawal due to preoccupation with developmental tasks and realistic pressures related to work and providing for your dependent children and elderly parents also. You might have to accept the normative changes that take place in your partner’s body and the resultant appearance and continue to find it sexually stimulating. Healthy relationships will deepen in significance while immature ones will break up on the shoals of this development. The task for you, Paritosh is to sort out, categorize and set priorities among relationships, and in the process balancing emotional needs and realististic demands and responsibilities. There is greater maturity when you are redefining what you are in a relationship, mourning lost relationships and focusing on current and future ones.
Work occupies a central position in adult life. Considered drudgery in youth, it has extraordinary value in this phase. In addition to the obvious function of earning a living, it is an activity that is organizing, provides purpose and direction, is a meaningful way to manage time and provides an environment in which to form sustaining relationships. You have to facilitate the development of the skills and capabilities of younger colleagues while fully realizing that these individuals will sooner or later replace you and assume control of the levers of power. You should sublimate the wishes to hold down and attack younger colleagues into those of generativity. The narcissistic gratification related to work may be considerable, compensating for the painful realities of everyday life. If there is an imbalance, work may become the main source of gratification resulting in a relative failure to achieve engaging relationships. The solution is to plateau the movement in the workplace. There may be a realization that time is running out and that many cherished ambitions and goals will never be realized and that there is not enough time left to achieve new ones of equal importance. The highest achievements have been possibly reached and this is static in comparison to the young who have the time to begin new ventures and bring them to fruition in the distant future. You might feel that you have become redundant as your heirs apparent can do everything that you can and a lot that you cannot. It is a feeling that your place in the sun is about to be over. The biggest challenge is one of the true acceptances of time limitation and personal death. The immortality of youth which is spurred by the thrust of physical growth and a seemingly endless future gives way to the inevitability of a personal end stimulated by an awareness of the aging process in the body, maturation of children and death of parents and friends.
This is the phase of life in which the experience of being human can be realized and enjoyed fully. It is when the combination of physical health and vigor, power and prestige in the workplace, accumulation of wealth and possessions and meaningful relationships from within the midst of three generations provide the potential for a life overflowing with richness and complexity. The mature life is the one in which the triumvirate of human experiences – love, work and play are successfully balanced to bring true fulfillment. Unfortunately, these joys do not last forever. Old age lies ahead. Although the hope and statistical expectation is for many years of mental competence and independence, physical and mental decline, increased dependence and eventually death must be anticipated. We show an unmistakable tendency to put death aside, to eliminate it from life. But if death can be met with feelings of acceptance and satisfaction, the natural endpoint of human existence follows a life lived and well loved.
