Who cares to acknowledge he has reached middle age? We do not mind in jest describing ourselves as old men, talking about ourselves as becoming feeble, and joking about senile decay. It is so palpably untrue that we feel no reluctance in so doing. Or again, there are those who are pleased to look upon themselves always as young men. They grew up in a society that was older than they were, or precociously entered among others whose years were more than their own. They heard themselves spoken of as young men and have persisted in imagining themselves always young. Occasionally there comes a reminder that things cannot now be done that used to be done easily; occasionally we realize that certain pleasures are pleasures now no longer. But we cling desperately to our youth - a proof positive that it is escaping from us: for, to say that we are middle-aged seems a terrible sentence to pass upon our humanity. The charms of childhood, even of babyhood, have been sung; the freshness and attraction of youth is the theme of half the literature of each generation ("If youth but knew"); old age has its artists who depict in soft tones and genial half-lights its venerable appearance and sunny smile; but of the generation that comes midway, the father who stands between sire and son, who has ventured to speak save as in a scoff levelled at those who would appear younger than they are? Yet through it, too, we must pass, are perhaps now passing. Should we not, therefore, face it consciously, this terrible middle age?
Let us, therefore, realize that we have outgrown our youth. So many things come to us, of which we catch ourselves repeating: That "I shall never do again." Many an exercise or game has to be relinquished: it no longer interests us in the way it did, for we are no longer as energetic or as capable at it as we were. All this does but mean that our youth has gone from us. I have reached, therefore, that period of middle age when physically my body has attained a certain development. It has become firmer, more set; but it has no longer the swing, the buoyancy, the suppleness that it once possessed. At the mercy of sudden draughts, it has become more vulnerable to its surroundings; but it has also coarsened in fibre. Now, does all this mirror inaptly the corresponding effect made by middle age upon my soul? It, too, is more set, fixed, hardened, grows less and less adaptable, less ready to welcome new fashions and new methods and new ideals. It remembers the past, but finds itself less and less in sympathy with the movements and ideas that are springing up around it. I find myself looking upon past and present as the complete work of humanity. I have, indeed, outgrown the ways of my fathers, but am as yet hardly conscious that the generation I myself represent has also begun to be behind the times. Nothing that now appears can I get myself to recognize as a legitimate development of the things I have fought for, but only as an abuse. My tolerance of others seems to have disappeared: I find myself getting mercenary, denouncing enthusiasm, scoffing at ideals.
I am middle-aged. When Dante woke in mid-life, he found himself in a dark wood. For us, too, this sudden realization of where we have got to, finds us very often in darkness, for middle age is the most dangerous age of all. A boy, a youth, have got so much that is good in them from their very boyhood and youth, that we can be hopeful of their triumph. But of middle age, what shall we say? with all its scepticism, its dislike of enthusiasm, its eighteenth-century hatred of anything unusual or unrestrained. Now it is not at all difficult for the scepticism, which 1 hold of others hopes, to seize more surely upon my own. I cannot expect to spend my time damping the ardour of others and yet be able to awaken my own. Not without much difficulty, without very much self-denial, shall I see myself pushed into the background by fresher aspirants to success. My passions may have grown calmer, but is not my selfishness on the increase? Sometimes even does it not seem as though the loss of passion has meant also the loss of generosity? Both passion and generosity are so often the determined results of impulse. I must look to my faith, my hope, my love. These will be all the more needed by me in my middle age - a faith, clear, unwavering, built on the supernatural, the unseen, a hope that clings to God despite my failures and follies, a love that takes sacrifice, self-sacrifice, as the keynote of life's harmonies. My prayers must be carefully considered, for my need now is for generosity. Let me make it the subject of daily solicitude, find opportunities for its daily exercise, study it in the life of Christ. The danger of middle age is terrible, not the splendid danger of passionate blood nor the danger of failing health, but the blighting force of selfishness and the loss of all ideals.
- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.