Mapping My Life

I seem to be reading a bunch of great books these days - including a few that I've been 'meaning to get around to' reading for along time.

In the late '70s to early '80s I remember seeing a book on my parents huge living room bookshelf called 'Passages'. The only reason it stood out to a 10 year old was because the letters of the title were in the colours of the rainbow. Looked pretty ! But once I got it off the shelf, it was all about that adult stuff. Not kid reading and I wasn't interested.

Well, in NZ last year I went into a warehouse book store looking for a book to read on the flight home. 'Lo and behold, I came across 'Hilary's Choice' by Gail Sheehy. Now I've always been interested in Hilary Clinton - at least after she made some tough decisions to stay with Bill when he made some lousy choices. You know what I'm talking about. And although they were the 'boomer' generation when I was in my twenties, her choices still fascinated me.

So I grabbed the book about Hilary, but once I'd read the book I realised this was the author of 'Passages'. At that point I started tracking down a copy of 'Passages', only to realize that it was written in the mid-70s and not really up-to-date when it comes to what we're living right now.

Fortunately, Ms Sheehy has anticipated this and written a host of other books, including Understanding Men's Passages (as it sounds, 1998), New Passages (an updated version of the original, 1995) and The Silent Passage (about menopause, late 90's). I'm in the middle of reading the first two.

So what of New Passages? Well, its really a great read. Not only does it provide a general overview of how life is unfolding for myself and others RIGHT NOW, but its a well written book which provides some interesting, real person stories. Here are some quotes from the book.

On p 14...
We seem to be suspended from our spiritual selves. Vaclav Havel, the philosopher and former president of the Czech Republic remarked on the paradox of our times:

'Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us, yet we understand our own lives less and less. We live in the post-modern world where anything is possible and almost nothing is certain.'

Sheehy goes on to explain...
Awareness and acknowledgement of a higher authority have been shunted into the realm of magic and mysticism. The concept of a Creator or an Earth Mother who anchors us in the universe, not for ourselves alone but as an integral part of some higher self-perpetuating universal order, represents an affront to modern science and technology and gets in the way of arrogant human aspirations. But there must be a reason that we are living so much longer. What are we meant to do with all this leftover life? Surely we are not meant to regress into tribal warfare and cultural genocide.

Haval,'The only real hope of people today is probably a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the Earth, and at the same time, the Cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for self-transcendence.'

Then on p. 146, Sheehy is talking about the ‘little death’ during the passage from early adulthood to second adulthood that occurs somewhere in the mid- to late 40’s. She states,

The effort expended in creating and defending that (early adulthood) persona is exhausting. Once we stop being ruled by the need to prove ourselves to the world and begin to relax our vigilance around maintaining our false self – what a relief – we can start stripping down to what is real, not false or copied, to uncover our own authenticity.

On p 161, Sheehy comments on ‘older’ women...
The same strong push toward authenticity appeared in my interviews with contemporary older women. By the time they reached their fifties, most educated women have acquired the skills and self-knowledge to master complex environments and change the conditions around them. The send of ‘being my own person’ is profound. They become increasingly the people they want to be.

p 153
But second adulthood is not about giving up or coasting until it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. It’s about finding new value in life. The secret in the search for meaning is to find your passion and pursue it.

p 169
In order to continue to enjoy life and be productive, it is particularly important at this stage to feel anchored in something. We need to know what is absolutely relevant about our lives. If we don’t know already, this is the time to work at finding out. It will provide a sense of direction and anchor.

And of course, it continues on. So if you're trying to understand where you are in your current 'life cycle' this book may help. After all, the sub-title is 'Mapping your life across time'. And that's just what it delivers, in a very readable and fascinating way. What you would expect from a woman whose mentor is Margaret Mead.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. And if you're keen, 'Understanding Men's Passages' is pretty enlightening, too.