Jung once analogized your life to the sun rising in the sky and then falling at night. There is so much promise in the morning. There is so much that can be done. So much life in front of you. You can taste possibility. Around midday, you turn into yourself, and as the remains of the day progress into inevitable night, the hunger you have for the possibilities of the day give morph inward. You bask in what was, and you appreciate things. Things seem to move slower, and you fully realize the conclusion of things is upon you.
Our lives and our careers are no different, and that internal twitch or pull you may feel can directly be tied to forsaking the clock that lives inside you. Hustling in middle age was never something the body was designed for. Climbing mountains and increasing complexity and possessions serves only to poke your thumb at the Gods at nature. This is not hyperbolic. Man breaks in middle age because he has no idea what to do. He has always climbed this mountain. He has always struggled. He has always ascended or attempting to possess, and then these small rips in inside begin accumulating. A humming. Pressure. “What is this?” is unconsciously asked. “Where now?” “What now?” The demands of the day are the same. The taxes and the bills and the kids and the streaming and the upkeep and the ego and the striving. All of it modern. All of it incessant. And yet, physically and mentally, for hundreds of thousands of years the human organism and consciousness itself has programmed something entirely different. They are, now, in all times, in all ways, in conflict. You seek permanence when there is none on offer. You seek ascension when there is none on offer. You were never designed to sit quietly and yet something inside is telling you to do that very thing. You fear stillness. Stillness equates death. It equates tumbling or shuffling down the mountain below. Lower and lower and you know, you very well know, once you make contact with the bottom, there is simply no way up again.
How many millions of Hero’s Journeys end in a disappointment that reverberates through generations. How many children living the un-lived lives of their parents? There is nothing to do but sit and listen to your body and your mind. Humbling though it is, it is the only natural way.