When I was a little guy, I was always looking forward to the next stage of life. Elementary school was looking forward to jr. high. Jr. high was looking forward to high school. Looking forward to driving. Looking forward to driving without an adult. Looking forward to graduation. to moving out. to college. to a job. marriage. house. kids. better car... The adventure of living and moving on was so great I always had my eyes set on the future.But not Peter. He liked being young. He liked being a kid. He liked the adventure of now not next year. And he stayed there in the forever now and never grew up. Fighting pirates and flying above the trees and befriending mermaids and caring for the lost boys. The older I get the more Peter seems to have found something very special. The older I get the more I realize it is just a story- a fairy story complete with its own fairy, Tinker Bell.
I am middle age. In that limbo age between young and old. It isn't like middle earth that Tolkien wrote about. Middle earth had mystery and adventure and drama and Hobbits (little guys with big hairy feet). There is no mystery to middle age and the adventures are meeting the bills and life gets filled with habits (little behaviors that that perform a brainless feat). This is the time of mid-life and that crisis that compels some to get a Harley or a Corvette or a brunette. It's a grasping for Peter's hand. To be pulled back into perpetual youth.
Interestingly enough, Peter Pan was written by a middle-age man. J.M. Barrie was well entrenched in his 40's when the play came out, and had just crossed into his 50's when the novel was produced. I wonder if he could have written the story line in his 20's when his future had more distant horizons than his past. Was Peter perhaps a longing of his own heart to capture a little more life than was allotted to him.
There is a tipping point in those middle years when you look to the horizons of the past and future and you see the latter is closer than the former. A realization settles in that you just don't know how far out that future horizon is. If anything goes wrong, then it could be closer than we think. A clogged artery, a mistake while driving, or (in my case) cancer and that horizon could suddenly be upon us.
I think the mid-life crisis is a symptom. I don't even know if it is grasping for perpetual youth- it would be nice, but who really wants to live through acne again. No, I think it may be more symptom of what one in my age group has not come to terms with- an expiration date, the lease is up, our mortality. That's why we have a crisis. We are not settle that we are really going to die. Yes, we middle-aged folks have know this in theory all our lives. But practically? I don't think so. It isn't settled in our minds as of yet. It is to be avoided. Run from. Delayed. And that encroaching horizon is intimidating. So we have the crisis of fear.
I imagine that those that are living the sunset years have their mortality more settled in their minds. The crisis has passed. Acceptance is the norm. So they have a bucket list. Much different than a mid-life crisis which is rooted in fear. A bucket list is based on the love of life. It has at its core the idea that life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away; time is limited, so let's live. I like that. It has hope rather than dilemma. I like that a lot.
I think I'll go ahead and skip the crisis. I am going after the bucket list. Peter can have his forever now. Today was worth leaving yesterday for. And for tomorrow I will gladly leave today. I am even warming up to getting settled in with my mortality (which is still way out there!). I may end up with a lot of the same things on my bucket list as I did on my crisis list, but it will be based on the love of life rather than the fear of losing it. Life is good, let's live.
My Bucket List:
Eat ice cream with Jennifer in Italy.
Walk my daughter down the isle.
Tell stories to my son's children.
Publish a book.
It's short, but there's time to add to it.
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