Growing in our mother’s body, we begin our journey of awareness on the physical plane. Our first breath is a stunning crash into the world of sight, sound, and sensation. Our first tasks are to communicate our basic survival needs for nurture and safety. As we grow, we make sense of our feelings and our bodies and learn how to apply them in the physical world. In childhood we navigate our personality and our bodies in small groups, like families and classrooms. In adolescence, we realize that we are part of a larger adult context and are challenged to learn who we are in that world.

As young adults we leave our parent’s nest. We venture into the much broader world and recreate our own  “families”–––biologically, in social and work groups, in neighborhoods and geographies. All along the way we are shaped by both our innate self and the outer culture that surrounds us. In order to grow, we will eventually need to examine our behavior and our cultural influences, and un-learn some of their negative effects. In middle age we mature into the responsibility of creating the world which the next generations will inherit. In old age, we have the opportunity to share the lifetime of wisdom we have gained.

The process of aging is not a steady linear adventure. There are challenging bursts of emotional and physical change along the way. Puberty is 0ne of those catalytic times. Researchers at Standford University have recently discovered two more. People also experience accelerated molecular and hormonal changes in their mid-forties and early sixties. These are the times often marked by menopause (both female and male) and “mid-life crisis.”

We tend to put brackets around all of these phases as if they are separate chapters in a life: chunks called childhood, early adulthood, middle age, old age. But every one of these phases has a life cycle of its own. Like any story, each of these chapters also has a beginning, a middle, and an end. If we think of a lifetime like a year, we can see that each of the four seasons comes on slowly, peaks, and then declines. Childhood is the spring of our lifetime, young adulthood is the summer, middle-age the autumn, and old age the winter. Each one of those seasons has its own  youth, middle age and old age. Life is not linear, it’s cyclical. We have many springs, summers, falls and winters.

I’ve been dealing with some significant health changes during this last year. It felt like a lot. I wondered why it seemed like the wheels were falling off all at once. Then I read about that Stanford study and realized that I just went through the big shift they describe in the sixth decade of life––I have completed the old age of my middle age!

You know what that means? It means that I am now in the youth of my old age. For some reason, I find this new start refreshing and invigorating. Now is the time to look at how I want to shape my attitude about my old age. I’ve decided that it’s a time to let go of being so responsible and celebrate living. If it’s not fun, I’m not doing it! And if I still have to do it, how can I make it fun?!

Every part of the life cycle has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Where are you in your life cycle? How can you use that as a springboard for what comes next? I’d love to hear your thoughts.