Chapters, ritual, and change
I read an article in the Atlantic recently about the importance of “chapter breaks” in life, and how we collectively missed that as a society in 2020. And while the article was specifically about the year of lost rituals during the pandemic, the idea of chapter breaks got me thinking about midlife crises.
While not by design, we had a kiddo later in life, which gave us plenty of time to have adventures. Now that we have H, I can see how, for now at least, life is about her. It’s about her school, her activities, her goals. And while I haven’t lost myself, and we’re still pursuing our own passions, I can see how, if you’re not actively working on that (and especially if you had kiddos earlier in life), it can feel like this endless purgatory.
I’ve had two periods in life so far that have felt like an unending stretch of blah. The first was in 2007-2009 when we had just bought our house, were focusing on nesting and doing home projects. I was settled in a good job, and nothing seemed to be changing, growing, or evolving.
The next period has been the past five years here in Spain. And while certainly I’m growing and changing (being an entrepreneur, starting a business, going back to regular work, etc), because we’ve been in a holding pattern, uncertain about when we were going home, if we were going home, it’s felt like this long stretch of just Waiting for Godot.
And I can really understand how people have a midlife crisis. If you got married at 25, had kids immediately, worked in the same job, lived in the same house, I can completely understand how people would feel the deep need to switch things up. Buy the fancy car. Get the plastic surgery.
On the other hand, I counted it up and since 2000 I’ve moved 13 times. And that counts eight years living in our house in California, so if you take that away it’s really 12 moves in 12 years. Which is exhausting. I’m ready for our next chapter to be one where we are simply quiet, and building a foundation of stability for the second half of life. A launchpad that will see us off on other adventures, but also provide a safe landing place.
Ritual is important as a marker, but it’s even more important to make sure that we’re creating those chapter breaks in our lives anyway – that stories reach some ending places so we can start something new, and it’s not just stretching out in a long line of sameness where the horizon never changes.
This year I’m hopeful that I will have some fresh chapter marks if we leave Spain, and begin building a new life back home. And even finding some smaller ways to mark the years – last year was the year I binged on Schubert, for example. I’m thinking this year might be more of a Bach chapter. There are many more concertos and choral works that I need to discover and delve into, and I’m thinking 2021 might be the year for that. If 2021 was the Moving Home and Bach chapter, I would be totally okay with that.
