Out of the fear zone

I have discovered a new aspect of midlife changes. This seems to be one of the core elements of this revolution (as that’s what it is) that if we manage to overcome, it will be a real game changer.

Even though we realise we need to change our lives and we do make some crucial steps, more often than not, there’s a force that is holding us back. For some reason we can’t spread our wings and fly, we might jump in the abyss when there’s nowhere else to go and we do learn to fly, but that enthusiasm is missing. We don’t run into the sea like we did when we were children, we are not fearless, not full of strength. Yes, we are, if we look back and see how far we have come, we definitely understand we couldn’t have done it if we were weak, but the joy of the jump is somehow missing. That scream on the rollercoaster. We are on a rollercoaster though, for sure, but our scream is mostly from fear.

Something is missing. We lost the ability to be happy for the moment, for no special reason. If we remember a summer day on the beach, how we loved to just be. How we loved the water, the sun, the dirt, and enjoyed every single minute carelessly.

Where is this now?

We are 100% alert, controlling everything, and can't relax even for a minute. Sure, many of us are responsible for children, many times alone (even those who aren’t, they are, too), or if not, have no help and support whatsoever. It’s only natural that we have gotten used to the fact that we have to solve everything alone, and if we don’t do it, it won’t be done. With this mindset, it’s quite hard to relax and enjoy the moment.

But it’s not only that. What we had when we were children was this complete trust that the world is a good place. We of course didn’t talk about it or even think about it, but there was this deep feeling, this conviction under everything that everything is alright.

Well, this I think has been lost over the decades. And it’s only natural that it has. How many disappointments have we gone through to convince us that this world is no Paradise? Actually many consider the main feature of being an adult the understanding that this life is not a fairy tale, and if you still believe in dreams or lofty ideas, you should “grow up”. We should understand that we might not end up with the love of our life, a job is just something that pays the bills, you don’t need to enjoy it, and what if you don’t save the world with your mission? There’s also nothing wrong with living in a boring, grey place, at least we have something secure, and illnesses sometimes can be fatal, that’s how life is.

We hear this and similar well-meaning advice for at least 2 decades, so no wonder we tend to convince ourselves that these are the new rules of life. This world is not perfect, the sooner we get used to it the better. We can build a not-so-bad life based on these rules, something that works, that avoids the great heartbeats but also the great disappointments, a decent, mediocre life. 

Which is in itself quite disappointing. And for many of us, the internal rebellion that started our midlife crisis was indeed a fight against a tasteless life. And the next step with this mindset is actually impossible: to build our life based on our soul, we need enthusiasm. In mediocrity, there is no such a thing. And if we understand where it comes from, the disappointments, it is even more natural that we need a new mindset for this new stage.

Let me just talk a little bit about the levels of life, to make us understand the topic a little more. 

The first level is childhood and adolescence. Here we just discover the world and who we are. We act out of instinct and possess an innate trust and hope that the world we are living in is a great place. Of course we meet unpleasant things already, but in this stage this positivity is somehow much stronger than the force of the events that bring us down.

Then we come to adulthood, which is level two. After the free discoveries of the younger years, here we tend to settle down and create/choose a system that we find suitable to create a decent life. We choose a nice job, get married, settle down, have kids maybe, and live according to a set of rules we consider useful to create the perfect life. Then we get disappointed obviously because of life, but then we console ourselves with the above-mentioned explanations like “life is not a fairytale”. So we end up with our soulless mediocre life, which might be a perfect structure, but have no joy in it.

And then comes level three, which is called midlife crisis, but I prefer the term “the revolution of the soul”. Here we rediscover who we really are. We get rid of everything that was not honest over the last decades and build our life back based on who we really are.

Obviously, to do this, we need to operate from our souls, which have to be strengthened. Soul is the part of the human that knows what they want to do, where they want to live, who is good for them, and every kind of connection. But the soul needs encouragement, and if all we have known is negativity, we need to create a new trust, something based on experience and not fear.

Because what are we actually speaking about?

Well, before stage 1, we had stage 0, which is the delicate passage into this world, right after birth. After getting out of “rahm” (the womb), we very often experience leaving “rahma” too, which is the unconditional love of God. Being surrounded by rahma is the original feeling of being safe, that the world is a nice place and that there is a solution for everything. Instead, we often find that here in this cold and dark world our needs are simply not met, we are left hungry, cold, warm, wet, desperate, and no one is there to help us. We understand from this that we are not important, and we develop a reaction based on the conviction that if we don’t do it, it’s not going to be done. We might have another reaction, too, that we see very often in toddlers, that if something is not successful, they tend to leave the whole thing.

For me these two reactions of our level 0 are too similar to our smart explanations in level 2, that are not suitable anymore in level 3, when we are about to free our soul.

The conviction that “this world is not a fairy tale, the sooner we get used to it the better” is just like that primary fear that we experienced as newborns that here everything is unsafe.

The life program of level 2, that “we need to do everything, otherwise it won’t be done” is just like our primary reaction, called “omnipotence syndrome”, that no one is taking care of us, so we better do.

We are afraid to hope that we can actually live in a place that is good for us, that we can have a job that doesn’t even feel like a job, because it’s our personality, that it’s possible, that our companion is not a bad person, or that we can heal from disease. It reminds me of the toddler who breaks their toy because it was too difficult to assemble. This life is not a fairy tale, so what do we expect? Let’s not hope, because hopelessness is actually familiar. We have built our whole life on it. It started from our primary fears of the first experiences of our life on earth, and then strengthened by the “smart” solutions of level 2, of the mediocre life.

But now we need to level up. We can’t operate from rationalised primary fear, if we want to free and strengthen our souls. Plus, it is not even rationalistic. It’s just fear, explained. But life contains so much more than reasons to be negative. The structure of rules which is the characteristic of level 2 is actually based on rationalised fear. It is not sustainable in level 3.

Now it’s time to free and strengthen our souls. To experience rahma again. To base our lives on hope, freedom, enthusiasm and positivity, just like we lived naturally in level 1. To understand that this too, just like the difficulties, are part of life. To operate from real experience and not fear. Experience tells us that we are actually surrounded by rahma. Fear proposes itself like a safe, familiar solution against disappointment, and then we created all the rationalist explanations for it. 

But life is much more than that. It contains unfamiliar surprises that could be really exciting! It is actually a wonderful place, that is no Paradise for sure, but every experience, every new chapter is interesting and fills us with wisdom. And if we listen to that wisdom, we understand that whatever is happening to us, it is for our own good. We are indeed safe. We are not lost. Not out of rahma. We can trust that things are going to turn right at the end. There’s no point in life that has as a lesson that everything is bad, and we cannot trust anybody, or that things always end up bad. What kind of lesson is that? Does that make sense as a life lesson?

I don’t think so. It’s just a rationalised fear in the comfort zone.

But one of the main characteristics of level 3, the revolution of the soul, is to leave the comfort zone. 

Fear is familiar, but it’s not true. Reactions like “I need to do everything alone” may be the only thing we have known - it’s high time to create another life strategy. To trust might be scary and risky, but so is a water slide! You just scream all the way down! If we listen to our real, rational experiences, the best things in life are often unexpected. We can consider our life a surprise party! Or a trip to somewhere unknown, where we can taste wonderful new foods and see beautiful new places, smell new fragrances we have never had.

Just thinking about it brings enthusiasm, doesn’t it? 

Obviously, the risk is very high. We are not young, the choices we make now are very serious. We can’t just jump into the unknown, leaving the familiar safety for some crazy adventure.

But this is life. And if we call ourselves any kind of believers, we must know that we are safe. That our Creator wants the best for us - and that includes that we must experience that after so many disappointments, we can also be happy. This is part of life. We are never out of rahma. Life can be beautiful, and we can win!

This is how we turn the tables and get rid of our primary fear for life.