In Midlife, the tangled knot of our ego and belief system starts to unravel and we stand vulnerable and confused.  What was all this for?  How did I get here and what does it mean?  How do I move forward embracing the next phase of life?  One that asks new things from me, that demands my full attention lest I fall asleep at the wheel and end up in life’s ditch.  Yet it is a new road, one that we haven’t travelled on – one that was only for the old and outdated, not for me, not for you.

And why has my body started to betray me, despite all the times it has been a faithful companion, answering my requests for productivity without sleep, vibrancy without nutrition and perfection without purpose?  Why all of a sudden do those laugh lines seem deeper? The lightness seems more settled? and the world changing just as fast as I am seems to be forgetting?

Sure, I can hold on to a chapter that I am proud of, moments where I was the closest to the sun.  I can follow the urgent suggestions all around me to hold on desperately lest the world find me invisible tomorrow.  Exasperated, I look around, and experience a loneliness not know before.  A longing for innocence and time and dreams.  A longing to wonder about the future and know all things are within my grasp.

The loneliness comes from that space, like a secret you learn much later that leaves you feeling  hurt and left out.  Knowing that you were not the only one who didn’t know but embarrassed to say so in order for others to think the ruse of innocence was all on purpose.  You were always too clever to be fooled.

Yet in that loneliness is a seedling.  There is potential.  But for it to grow, the tangled knot has to be loosened.  Time has checkmated you.  There is no backwards. There is forward.  In forward, there are choices and lessons and decisions.  We see ourselves as if for the first time, learning to ask for what we need like a toddler.  There is a resistance as well, like trampling feet on a busy sidewalk, the seedling must endure.

We must go forward in our new humility.  Seeing things from a new perspective, finding our space as we carefully pull at the knot.  Respecting all the knot has brought to us and gives us in the moment.  Learning to hold it and cherish it and know that it is ours and ours alone.

Although, how do I learn to let go when I have worked so hard and I am tired?  Why can’t I just keep wrapping the rope around my knot? Big knots are powerful – they can be wielded like a weapon.  Without it I am defenseless. Yet, the calling is loud and it is hard to ignore it.  Those who have untied their knots are hard to see, for they are free.  They no longer need to show others their knots, comparing sizes and telling tales of each twist and turn of the rope.

Midway through midlife I wonder, I have no answers, only my knot in hand, looking forward.