The crisis

Is specifically a middle-aged crisis.

It comes after decades of world-building,
making a family, making a career,
making meaning.

And then there’s this crisis
that interrupts it.

There is a reckoning in middle age,
it’s a tragic sense that you have
been formed by things,
and sent hither and thither
by those things.

Put in a frenzy
and made to run around the place,
and up and down the house in
the service of those things,
and they were not real.

They were the product of
your upbringing or conditioning
or gender or social class.

There’s a certain point where suddenly
the grip of all of that on you loosens.
It’s like a stage set beginning to sort of crumble,
and you start to see it wobbling.

You can get some really startling
and frightening
perspectives on identity
once you start looking at it from there.

The thought
that you’ve wasted your entire life in the service of things
that didn’t really exist - that you were in a prison
where the door, in fact, was open,
and you’ve sat there all this
time...

This week's piece is inspired by an interview with Rachel Cusk in The Paris Review.

Dream intentionally - while you're awake.