An author I follow recently wrote an essay detailing how she felt out of sorts. She is in her late 40s and going through things with family and kids and career.
Her first piece of advice to herself and others was to “empty your purse” so you can look at everything that’s in there. She was carrying heavy things and they were causing the purse to “cut into her shoulders.”
The purse analogy is a good one. But I couldn’t connect with it personally. My heart had been feeling heavy too. Why couldn’t I just empty my purse like she did?
And I finally realized that heavy things are different when we are in our 40s and mid 50s. They are often things that, to some extent, can be lightened. I used to say yes to everything. And then one day “the straw that broke it all” would get thrown in. And it became too much.
So I would sit down and figure out how to lighten my life. Maybe it didn’t get perfectly lightened, but it was a touch easier and my shoulder didn’t hurt quite so much. Everything is relative that way.
But today? I’m pretty much doing just the things I want to do. That heavy feeling still creeps in though. Sometimes it feels like every cell in my body is weight training.
During this season, my shoulder feels ok. But my heart? That feels heavy a lot. And I think that’s generally the case as we approach our 60s and beyond. We aren’t carrying things so much as we are carrying people. Obviously we carry people in our younger years too. But as we get older, we’re not doing 100 other things as well.
Some of the differences:
1. We don’t just have children who are young adults; we have very adult children who are out making decisions and living their lives. And there’s often grandchildren in the mix as well. They go through all the ups and downs of life, and we feel all the bumps with them. There’s just not much we can do about any of it.
2. Our circle of friends is likely smaller, but we care more deeply about each one inside it. During this season, they are going through more personally, either with their families or themselves. There’s relational issues and maybe issues with their families. They are losing family members and friends they were once close with. We know their pain and carry it with them.
3. Fear can creep in over health, and the health of people we love. Everybody is going through something. We carry it all. Because we care.
It helps to acknowledge that this season is different. Very little is being written about how life changes in our 60s and 70s. And I doubt there’s anything much about the 80s and 90s.
Most of what’s different today can’t be changed. There’s no purse lightening activity available. The most we can do is recognize all that’s in our hearts. I have found that getting together with a friend and just sharing life helps. Often, if it is a particularly heavy time, one of us will say, “You’re carrying a LOT right now.”
Just having our hearts “seen” by someone who knows us well helps us breathe a little deeper. Sharing our hearts, and helping someone else feel seen by sharing theirs, may help to lighten heaviness just a bit.
Because at this season as well, everything is relative that way.
Wide Angle Lens 