Making the Most Out of the Last Half of Life

Coming to Terms With Mortality

The two most stress-filled decades of life are probably
the 40s and 50s, yet few people are prepared to face
them. Several factors make these two decades trying.
These are the years when coming to terms with your
own mortality. You tend to feel more and more powerless
as a parent; your parents' health begins to fail; the work
world changes; and you prepare for retirement.

Let us look carefully at these stages.

In your 40s and 50s, you come to terms with your own
mortality. Once you can double your age and find it
difficult to think of yourself being alive at that time, your
perspective on life changes. You begin to think of your
life in terms of years left rather than in terms of the
years lived.

When we are young, we seldom think about death. We
take the future for granted. We rationalize the deaths of
grandparents by reassuring ourselves that they are old enough to die. We treat the deaths of younger people as
though something like that could never happen to us.
However, as we grow older, these ways of shielding
ourselves from the reality of death are no longer effective.

We do so many things to try to hide our age. We live in a
society that venerates youth. We want to cling to youth as
long as we can. Underneath this clinging to youth is a fear
of death. As you get older, you reach a place in life where
you need to conquer that fear of death before it destroys
your joy of life.

Recently, I met a man in his late 50s who was battling
cancer. His wife was having difficulty grasping the reality
of it all. After hearing the doctor's report, she said to her
husband in private, "What does all that mean? Are you
terminally ill?" He looked at her and said, "My dear, we
are all terminally ill!"

When children are small and unable to think in complex,
abstract terms, they are no physical or mental match for
you. They are relatively easy for you to control. However,
when the burst of adolescent growth occurs and the
abstracting ability of teenagers allows them to challenge
your judgments, parents begin to feel increasingly
powerless. Regulating the tension between the freedom
that teens want and the restrictions that they need
becomes difficult.

Part of the difficulty is that we think back on our lives
when we were adolescents and know that there was a
part of our lives that our parents were unaware of. We
wonder how many secrets are in our teenagers' lives
about which we know very little.

There are other stresses that come to bear in
launching teens into life:

--Financial stresses. Raising teenagers is expensive.
Their wardrobes and their hobbies are expensive.
They want cars of their own and that means car
insurance. Also, there is the matter of
a college education, which is tremendously expensive.
All of these financial stresses come to rest on the
parents.

--Testing the limits. When a youngster comes into 13-15
years of age, if the parents draw the line here, they
want to draw it back just a little bit. They are always
pushing the envelope, especially regarding curfews
and bedtimes.

--Friendships and relationships. There are the usual
anxieties about teens' relationships with the opposite sex.
You want them to save virginity for marriage and yet you
know the power of peer pressure is relentless. You want
them to settle into a career before they marry as well as to find the right marriage partner.

In midlife, you sometimes feel as though you are
parenting two generations--your children and your
parents.

When your parents' health begins to fail, you feel the
need to assume more and more care of them.
Sometimes it is necessary to bring them into your
home. When this occurs, usually everyone feels the
pressure. After all, more people have to share the
telephones, bathrooms and other living conveniences.
Grandparents often have difficulty allowing parents
to manage their family without interference.

I can remember when we had to put Mom in a nursing
home. Her memory was bad and she could no longer
stay with one of us. At times she would turn the stove
on, forgetting that she had turned it on. We finally had
to come to the conclusion that the nursing home was the
safest and best place for her. When we got to the nursing
home, she was overwhelmed by it all. I never will forget
the blank look that came on her face as she asked, "What are you doing to me?"

When parents have to be put in a nursing home, we often
feel guilty even if it is of their own choosing. Watching the
health of your parents fail is traumatic. Not only do you feel
helpless to spare your parents' suffering, but you are
confronted with the inevitability of your own death.

At midlife, if you are not reaching or nearing your career
goals, it is time for reassessment. This may force you to
bury dreams that are obviously not attainable. This brings
a sense of loss and grief. Then, if you are at your career
peak, you have to come to terms with the fact that future
promotions will be limited. This will lessen motivation for
your external goals and turn toward placing more
emphasis on "smelling the roses." Regardless of whether
you are burying your dreams or smelling the roses, midlife
takes its toll.

Men may have a little more trouble with this than women.
A man's world is his work and his wife and kids. A
woman's world is her husband, children, parents, brothers and sisters, and her grandchildren. We are very different.
Unfortunately, relationships are much less important for a
man than they are for a woman. A man would be a better
husband and a better father if he was more invested in
personal relationships.

Other stresses appear as the work world changes at
midlife. If a couple has neglected their marriage, this
is the time when it will show. Divorce rates skyrocket at
midlife. During this time, heart attacks claim their greatest
number of victims. This is why there is no better time to
introduce people to Christ.

Young people should really begin savings programs in
their 20s. If you do not begin to focus on your retirement
in your early 40s, you are going to be caught short in your
60s. An increased focus on savings is a must to avoid a
lower standard of living in later years.

Also at midlife we need to be reminded of the Christian
virtue of temperance. Extremes in life are seldom good
for anyone. This is especially true of diet and exercise
programs. Unsound diet and exercise programs can be
fatal.

Of course, there certainly are some positive things about
midlife. First, there is the excitement of midlife career
changes. Today, as life expectancy increases, there
is often time for you to prepare for and enjoy a second
career. Do not be reluctant to go back to college to
prepare for a second career.

Another positive factor of midlife is that, as parenting
responsibilities decrease and work goals diminish, you have more time for each other. In these two decades,
your marriage could reach some of its most memorable
moments.

Another advantage to being older is you can be more
relaxed about life. When you are younger, you are under
a lot of career pressures and parental pressures. As you
grow older, these have been lifted from you.

God wants to help you make the most out of the last half
of your life. In all of the stresses and difficulties you may
face, God will help you.