What is the wisdom of the middle?
Notes on 45
What is the wisdom of the middle?
-question from our Ecoversities micro-gathering in Costa Rica
Dear beloved Enchantable readers,
It’s my birthday week! I love birthdays. I feel incredibly lucky and grateful to be completing another trip around the sun, my 45th (as of April 24th).
I love birthdays as reflection points, along with the solstices and equinoxes (and new moons and full moons…ok, the year is full of reflection points and if you have been around Enchantable, you already know I love this :). A time to take stock and give thanks. A time to look back at the year that has been, and think about the next trip around the sun.
But 45 calls for a different kind of reflection - not just of this year, but of this half-decade. Forty-five is halfway through the 40s. Forty-five is halfway through life, if one is very lucky and gets to live til 90 or beyond (as my maternal grandma has). By most lifetimes, it is well beyond half-way. Capitalist systems would like us to believe that this is the middle, or even 50. But if we realized and reckoned with the fact that it is not, we might want to retire sooner, and that would not benefit capitalism. How might we live differently if we realized that the middle is actually unknown, and that if 72 is the average life expectancy (and the age my mom was when she died), that the 30s are closer to the middle than we might like to believe?
At 45, I am so incredibly grateful for my health, knowing this is a precious gift, and that my 45 years have been very blessed with this. My 45th birthday gifts to myself include a check-up, a mammogram, and an eye exam.
At 45, I am getting my first pair of glasses, and am delighting in this little signpost of getting older. I am excited about the accessorizing possibilities and feel the glasses will contribute to my overall scholarly vibes - no doubt the reading and writing of scholarship has contributed to the need :).
At 45, I find myself midway through this decade of the 40s. The first half of the 40s have felt like lifetimes: early motherhood, the pandemic, losing my mom, finishing my doctorate, moving to Costa Rica, returning to the University for Peace as faculty. Quite literally, the best of times and worst of times in these 5 years. Definitely the most intense and challenging part of my life so far.
These 5 years might have changed me more than any other 5-year increment. And, this current chapter is exquisitely beautiful on so many levels, one of my favorites of these four-and-a-half decades. At 45 you can see that these things inter-are, the mud and the lotus. And you know the impermanence of the chapters quite well.
At 45, I am living into dreams and growing them.
At 45, I am deeply committed to my own joy and happiness, and doing as much good as I can with this one wild and precious life1.
At 45, I am so sick and tired of patriarchal bullshit (sorry not sorry - it merits the use of the word).
At 45, I own the fact that I am a gift to any space I enter (thank you to my sister and astrological intiutive genius Katina Castillo aka Celestial Revelations for this reminder). I am learning to act according to this knowing.
At 45, I have a flourishing creative life and feel so enlivened by having this creative outlet which gives so much energy back to me (which is also to say, thank you, dear readers!).
As I write, we are in the energy of the great Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Taurus, what many astrologers are saying is a once-in-a-lifetime transit and the biggest astrological moment of 2024. Jupiter-Uranus in Taurus is asking us to live into our values and priorities, double-down on our dreams. It is asking us to dream even bigger.
At 45, you need to get serious about dreams you have yet to realize.
At 45, I declare:
I want to write books. (I feel there is more than one in me. I am a writer, and clearly I write a lot. But I love books and I would like some of my words to sit on a shelf in a beautiful material form, that they might provide comfort, support, and inspiration to others as my favorite books do for me.
I want to create containers that don’t yet exist that can hold my work, that are organized and aligned by their structure with my priorities and values of love, joy, peace, care, beauty, creativity, and integrity.
I want to continue cultivating a life of balance between work and play and rest and joy, a spaciousness and slow pace and abundance.
I lean into my witchy ways, and remain steadfastly committed and dedicated to meditation, mindfulness, and magical practices that are the bedrock and foundation of my life.
I let love lead and guide me and be the driving force of my life.
Time is a precious gift, as my teacher Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us. Each moment is truly a gift that we get to be alive on this planet. I recommit to not wasting time, to using my precious lifeforce energy to creating more beauty and joy in every way that I can, to making my life the most beautiful work of art for peace that I can muster. I commit to not wasting time and energy on others’ small-mindedness (read: patriarchal bs) and fear and delusion.
I release what is draining to make space for what is life-affirming, life-giving, and energizing.
I take stock of all the things for which I am grateful, which are countless. My sweet, special, goofy daughter. My vocational path. My communities. My family. My health. The lands that hold me. My ancestors and teachers. The infinite supports, the vast web that upholds this particularly beautiful moment and chapter of my life, which grows out of all other chapters before it.
What is the wisdom of the middle?
This was a question that was asked as part of our Ecoversities micro-gathering in Costa Rica in February. We were asking it with respect to Costa Rica being in the middle of North and South America, a bridge between them. Ecologically, this lends itself to one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet. Life flourishes here in the middle.
What is the wisdom of the middle?
Standing in the middle, you can see the many, many lifetimes you lived in the first part of your life. Epochs, eons. You can see that each stage is impermanent. You can also see the threads running through, the lifelines, weaving their way in and beyond each chapter, each stage.
Standing in the middle, you have things you have done and practiced for decades, that you have acquired skill and experience in. Practices that have molded and shaped who you are, ways of being that are part of your bones now.
Standing in the middle, you can see what stretches before you, but much like the horizon, you can’t see how far it is. Vast uncertainty. Having lived through what you’ve lived through, you know nothing is guaranteed, not tomorrow, not five years from now.
Standing in the middle, you are on the bridge of what has been and what could be. You have lived long enough to know how hard it is for change to happen, and also that change is constant and can happen in an instant. The only lasting truth is change, the great sage Octavia Butler writes. You know how many lifetimes can be lived in one lifetime and you intend to live more.
Standing in the middle is to sit in these tensions, comfortably. To stand in the middle is to be comfortable with holding tension, holding responsibility, holding a lot. To stand in the middle is to care for the young while you care for the old, both arms outstretched. To stand in the middle is to be neither (young nor old), to be both (young and old).
Standing in the middle as a woman, a middle-aged woman, you know that patriarchal forces would now like to dismiss you, cast you aside, for you to step back away from the spotlight, your childbearing capacities waning (and your desire for them non-existent). The patriarchy would like you to wane and fade away as your hair grays and your eyes strain.
You can feel your power building, however. You know you are just getting started. You know your power and magic are growing, and the clarity of your priorities and commitments is sharpening with your vision aided by your new glasses. To stand in the middle, you know you are growing in your power and you sense that your best days and most valuable contributions lay before you. Your feel the power in your graying hair, each one earned through trials and challenges. Each one a mark at the years you have lived, the wisdom you have gained.
You know the practice of loving your graying hair and growing wrinkles and softening and changing midlife body is a big F you to the patriarchy and capitalism. You delight in this, even though it isn’t always easy.
Standing in the middle, you have gathered wisdom and experience and have so much to give. To stand in the middle is to stand in the power of this, to be grateful for this.
Standing in the middle is to not yet be an elder, but to see that door coming, if you are lucky, and to know that you want to be a good one, and to be a good one is being shaped by what you do and practice and learn now.
Standing in the middle is to know that when you view the middle later in life it will look different. But this is what it looks like and feels like now, being in it.
Standing in the middle, you can see that love and relationships are what matter most, that everything is relational, and that our work, together, is loving the world and each other.2
Standing in the middle is to know you should celebrate life every chance you get, which is what I will be doing this week!
I know many of you, dear readers, find yourselves in the middle or beyond.
What gifts and wisdom has the middle given you?
Sending this to you with gratitude for your being here with me,
gratitude for these 45 trips around the sun,
and with a deeper commitment to live even more fully into each moment I get to receive in this life on this precious planet.
Stephanie
P.S. A great birthday gift would be sharing Enchantable with someone you know who might enjoy it!
In honor of 45, I leave you with a song with 45 in the lyrics, Cornershop’s Brimful of Asha, part of the soundtrack of my youth:
Phrase from poet Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver, again. “My work is loving the world,” from her poem, Messenger.
Lovely reading about the wisdom of the middle. I love being reminded of balance and harmony in every aspect of my life --- the balance of being relaxed and joy, work and play. I think you: "What gifts and wisdom has the middle given you?" In my case is gratitude. Taking the stock of things I'm grateful for, rather than seeing the things that don't work in my life. That things are "inter-be" and "inter-are" as you mentioned. Lovely reading about "Jupiter-Uranus in Taurus is asking us to live into our values and priorities, double-down on our dreams." As my birthday coming up next month, as a Taurus, I'm inspired to double down on my dreams. Thank you for this beautiful publication.