On the doorstep

Several months ago I heard of the 50th anniversary of my old secondary school - and it got me thinking.

I thought back to that morning in February 1960 ( I can't remember the exact date) when I dressed, put on my cap picked up my school lunch and headed off out the door, just like I'd done day after day for the 8 years that had preceded it.

But as I rode my bicycle toward the gates of my Secondary School for the first time, I was unknowingly crossing the doorstep from childhood into the training room of life. A place where, over the next few years, I would learn not only academic truth but, more importantly, a place where I would absorb important truths about life. Values and attitudes that would shape me as an adult: intangible things like, an enquiring mind, confidence, a work ethic, a concept of responsibility, societal values such as etiquette the importance of team contribution, first love, etc. etc. A worldview which I would gathered eclectically, recklessly, taking from here and there what ever took my teenage fancy. Like a hungry man at a lavish smorgasbord, piling my plate with much more than I could possibly eat. A plateful that would shape my future, a starter kit for the rest of my life.

And so here I stand at 63 on another doorstep. The doorstep of what is popularly called the Second half of Life. Standing here with a worldview built by a 13 year old, and largrely unreviewed over the past 40 years.

Eric Ericson, the father of developmental psychology, who coined the now famous phrase,'identity crisis' speaks of this second half of live as a time when life challenges us to integrate our 40 year old, eclectically gathered worldview into the reality of our post family, post career, pre pensioner life. The fruit of this pleasurable/painful exercise, he assures us, will be self acceptance, contentment and inner peace,.

I'm not terribly advanced on this new journey toward a peaceful integration of myself, but I have realised that I'm on the doorstep of the last frontier and a doorway to self knowledge and acceptance.

And I thought midlife crisis was the last big hurdle.

Dream on John!