Th3 Simple Questions

I AM DIS-INCARNATION:

AGE 42, THE HINGE YEAR

WHO AM I?

I am dis-incarnation, the gradual grapevine step that you do as you dance your way off the stage of life. I’ve been in the script for years; you’re only just now beginning to notice my entrance. Perhaps it was the wrinkles. Maybe a little arthritis around the edges. Some hair loss, mmm? White hairs? And the menopause ads seem more present.

Your vitality and health, which all these years lived deep in your skeleton, is now packing up and going to Florida. All your hormonal doo-dads are beginning to pack their bags, too. They know you are watching the commercials that suggest that their sell–by date is approaching. They will be replaced by hormonal treatments as offered by the young, virile and buxom sales team on the telly. Truthfully, with the exception of big-time pharma for men with E.D., this is the same stuff that’s been offered since the late 1800s to generation after generation. You do age. You will die. Still, spending money and applying creams will give you and me something to do and pass the time while you dis-incarnate!

WHY AM I HERE?

Ah, but this is an EXCITING time! Around age 42 is THE hinge year. You may feel it’s too late! Or you’re getting bogged down. Or strangely liberated. At age 42 you can look into the windshield of your life and see the off-ramp for death. And out the rearview mirror, your birth and childhood waving bye-bye! This is like the autumnal equinox of your life, in which the future and the past are in balance. Some say it feels as if you have a moment of weightlessness, in which all forces are equal; that can be frightening. Others say that you can feel the greatest sense of freedom and potential.

About age 42 is the year in many biographies in which breakthroughs and radical shifts of all kinds have taken place: Galileo made his first telescopic discoveries; Freud published Studies on Hysteria; it was Jung’s most critical period; Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique; and Rosa Parks chose to stay seated.

WHAT DO I WANT?

This mountaintop experience is a great time to look at your life. Your child-rearing years may be behind you, but now is the time for spiritual children. And a new type of seeing may be possible; an inner vision may bring you insights that you will learn to trust.

But now is the time for you to make serious plans and do research for how you will spend your life after age 62, the next great hinge!

To rephrase an old saying that says:

“From age 21 to age 42 we try many things and learn how to live.

“From age 42 to age 63 we learn to sort through what we have lived and choose what we love.

“From age 63 to death, we live only what we love.”