"How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses and violets and morning dew!" ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
My husband and I were reminiscing this morning about how miserable our 30's were and how much happier our 40's are. So what brought this up? Our house is under construction again. We are remodeling the moldy, 31-year-old bathroom upstairs. The construction workers have been here all week, and I got to talking to one of them. He’s a strong, handsome kid in his early 30's. He asked me if I enjoyed gardening. “It looks like a lot of work,” he said. I replied that I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it. Then I asked him if he enjoyed construction. He said that he hated it. “Then why do you do it?” I asked.
He explained that he was stuck in it because everyone in his family did construction, and he didn’t know what else to do. But the recent recession made him consider going to college, although he had no idea what he wanted to study or how he would make a living. I tried to encourage him, and I wished him luck.
This conversation got me thinking about a lot of things. First, I wondered why anyone would spend their life doing something that they hated. Life is too short for that. I remember when I was in my early 30's. I still hadn’t found my career, and I worried about the future. I was unhappy for many reasons. Serious health problems prevented me from having any more children, but I hadn’t yet accepted my situation. I was angry, resentful and fearful most of the time. I didn't know that true happiness is independent of my life situation. I had a set of religious beliefs that I was raised with, but I lacked true spirituality, which is beyond a list of beliefs, rules and ideas.
I look back on my 30's as the most difficult time of my life. I have a lot of friends and siblings who are still in their 30's, and I see a common theme.
In their 30's, people start to sense their mortality. Younger people don’t think much about death. The very idea of growing old seems ludicrous when you’re a teenager. But people in their 30's begin to feel an impending sense of doom. They’ve experienced enough of life to realize that they aren't going to live forever. They don't know how to cope with this fear, so they try to repress it. But it keeps popping up at the most unexpected and inconvenient times. The only way to get over the fear of death is to face it head-on. There are many ways to do this, some of which are discussed by spiritual teachers, philosophers and psychologists.
In your 30's, you look at what you’ve accomplished so far in life, and it’s never enough. For women, this sometimes happens when the doctor tells them that their biological clock is winding down, and if they want to have children, they’d better hurry up. I have several friends who have been desperately trying to get pregnant over the past year. All of them expressed the same idea to me – that they must have another baby “before it’s too late.”
Two of them went on those dangerous fertility drugs, which seriously damaged their health. I tried to explain to them that neither drugs nor stress was going to help them. But I don’t think they heard me. People are in such a hurry to consume pharmaceutical drugs that they don’t take the time to discover the underlying causes of their health problems. Incidentally, Dr. John Lee's book, Premenopause, addresses the causes of infertility and how to treat it naturally.
People in their 30's are caught up in the illusion of time, which makes them slaves to fear. Probably the greatest fear is the fear of turning 40. I remember age 39. I was counting down the days before I turned 40, thinking that something about my life would end when I hit that magic number. Actually, something did end – my fear of turning 40.
So here’s what I want to say to everyone: 40 is wonderful. 41 is even better! Life just keeps getting better and better every day. You know the saying that once you turn 40, you are “over the hill”. What is this mysterious hill? I think that the hill is the ego. It is the foolish expectations of the world. What could be better than getting over the hill? I am all in favor of getting over the ego stuff.
In How to Meditate, Lawrence LeShan describes the developmental sequence of life: The first 20 years are spent learning how to operate in the relative world. The next 20 years are spent working in the world -- concentrating on career and family. Around age 40, a person begins to discover the transcendent -- the spiritual realm. Learning how to operate in this realm occupies the next 20 years of life. LeShan says, "The fourth twenty years are spent as a teacher to guide other students."
Carl Jung declared that he had never seen a patient over 35 whose problem was not basically a spiritual one and who was not cured when his spiritual problem was solved. Younger people are necessarily preoccupied with survival in the relative world, but spirituality becomes critical to one's happiness and peace of mind later in life. If the problem is not addressed, a person will become more anxious and dysfunctional the older they get. I know some older people who still act like teenagers. It is very disturbing.
If you don’t get over the hill in your 40's, when will you get over it? I talked to an elderly woman at church last week. When I asked her how she was, she said, “Just terrible!” Then she told me about her health problems. I sympathized with her because I know what it's like to suffer from chronic pain for many years and to have life-threatening health problems. But I wondered how a person of her age could still be so identified with her body that she equated her sense of self with her diseases. I remember how unhappy I used to be when I derived my sense of self from my body. It took many years of suffering for me to realize that I was more than just a body and an ego.
Eckhart Tolle says, “Suffering cracks open the shell of the ego. And then comes a point where it has served its purpose. Suffering is necessary until you realize that it is unnecessary.”
Even harder to get over is your identification with the mind and its compulsive thinking. My daily meditation and now-moment-awareness exercises have helped me to realize that “I am not my thoughts.” Eventually, I came to know that “I am not my emotions.” Then it followed that “I am not my personality.” Have you ever considered that one?
That was a mind-blowing experience. I woke up one day feeling like I had lost my personality. For the next few days, I wandered around, unable to identify myself because I had suddenly seen through my personality and its changeable nature, and I realized that it isn’t who I am. I used to be a “shy person”. But shyness is just fear. It is a habitual response resulting from past trauma. When I got over my past trauma using Holosync meditation, I also got over the feelings and habitual responses associated with it. I can now look anyone in the eye without feeling unreasonably fearful or self-conscious.
I am no longer shy. But that doesn’t mean that I have turned into a loud and obnoxious person. “Loud and obnoxious” is just another habitual response -- another coping mechanism. None of these so-called personality traits are who a person really is. Only when you find your own true Self can you see the true Selves of others. That’s when you quit judging them. You quit mistaking their habits for who they really are.
If “I” can observe my thoughts, my emotions, and my personality, then who is this observing presence?
That is the mystery. The “I” that is the observer doesn’t take anything too seriously. It just watches with interest. I can look at all other aspects of myself and see how they arise and pass away. Only "I", as pure awareness, remain. This perspective has turned my life into an adventure. I feel like I am watching my life as you would watch a movie. You know that it’s just a movie, so you don’t take it too seriously. I watch my hair getting a little grayer every day, and I smile at the image in the mirror. And she smiles back. We enjoy the secret joke – that it’s all an illusion.
I’m over the hill, and it’s an easier hike down from here.
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