If this is midlife crisis, do I suffer through it or is it guns in the morning?
This week has been filled with thoughts of time. Time spent, time wasted, time yet to pass – a lament for time lost.
My life has been that of a creator at heart. When I was young, I dreamt of being a pianist – I still do. But my childhood was marked by frequent moves and my teenage years by passionate rebellion. I never grasped the discipline or learned the tools needed to steadily build a practice around playing the piano.
A pivot in my early twenties brought me to Copenhagen, alone with no friends, new to the city’s hustle, a stranger in a strange land. I serendipitously fell in love with the theater, the people surrounding it – and a new dream rose in me: I wanted to write music for plays. A ghost of past ambitions, nevertheless filled with the promise of a life in music. I spent years trying for this, but was never able to follow through.
I started as a bartender in a famous jazz club and spent my nights in the company of the world’s best musicians. Working my way up, I became a manager of some of the finest musical venues in Copenhagen. I figured, if I wasn’t talented enough to create myself, I would surround myself with people who were and by extension experience a sense of resolution to my inner restlessness. Ironically, this backfired, putting a spotlight on the wide gap between my skill and true mastery, only strengthening my conviction of not measuring up.
My dreams were real, but held back by a lack of skill and attention to the craft, and so they stayed only that – dreams. A fata morgana, just out of reach.
This lack was also a masquerade. A symptom of something much deeper – a longing to belong. I felt distant and carried a latent loneliness, ached for attachment and to be part of a flock – people who knew and saw me.
All this brought me to my current vocation. My twenties were almost up, and I felt out of options and out of time as well. I decided to pursue a living in graphic design, something I had more than a passing interest in, but never a full burning passion.
This resulted in a career that has since felt unfulfilling and superficially patched on to my life. My best years had come and gone and my path was set. Following your passion and building a life seems to be a young man’s game, and you rarely hear stories of the 40- or 50-year-old uprooting all their work, building a new career and life, finally able to bring their true intent into this world. If I were to catch up with everyone else’s measure of success, there was nothing left to do but buckle down and dig in the groove.
This state and outlook have discouraged me for a very long time now, years even. But a shift is slowly taking place.
I am coming up on three months of no drinking. The vigor and energy I feel from this, mind and body unclogged from the fog and melancholy of alcohol, has charged me with new purpose. It seems almost silly to talk about feeling stuck with no outlook on life when you are only 40 years old – I probably haven’t even lived half my life yet. But the walls were towering claustrophobically around me.
Even though I am encouraged by this new energy, I feel an urgency in the choices to come. Although there is much life left and time to build something new for myself, I lack the young man’s conviction of invincibility and immortality. I know time is finite and its tempo seems only to be accelerating, burdening my choices with a sudden weight. Any single path chosen also means a rejection of most other opportunities. The focus must be greater, the determination more singular in its expression and the renunciation of alternatives more clear. It is not an easy thing to do and can almost grind me to a halt. But if I’ve learned anything in the last twenty years, it is that wishes and dreams not acted on carry a frustration and sorrow much greater than trying and failing in the pursuit of said same things.
So what to do? Do I return to dreams of the past, hoping to find a version that can suspire today? Or do I move on and accept what has passed? Can old dreams even find new ground after this many years of neglect and rejection?