A Mid Course Correction?

This year I am acutely aware that soon I will be turning 40 years old.

Forty! FORTY! FORTY!

This is hard to believe because when I was little (7 or 8 years old) I thought I would be dead before I hit 13 years old. Not because I was such a daredevil or because I lived in a war torn region of our world or because I was forced to work in a coal mine at a tender age. It all had to do with the fact that although my teenage years were comprehensible, they were so far in the future. Surely Jesus would come back or the sun would burn out before then.

But seriously 40!

As I have thought of my life screaming towards this mile marker of maturity and respectability, my mind has turned to things like adventure , motorcycles and monotony. I feel uneasiness inside. I yearn for some kind of freedom I have not felt before. I wonder what it would be like to me, but only different.

I am not sure if this is a despite cry for help from an average middle age man lamenting his age (regret). Maybe it is a last attempt to mark the world with my brand (significance). Maybe it is only a psychological barrier needing to be crashed in order for it to lose it power (distraction).

Am I heading for what is called a "mid-life crisis?" Maybe, but I don’t think so. This is not really a crisis. It is just a change. An alteration of perspective. A rational coming to terms with.

I think men face this time in their lives when they feel things need to change or see they are changing on there own and in a grab for control try change things they are dissatisfied with. Unfortunately, most men change the wrong things, which leads to or creates the “crisis.”

I don’t need a new wife; I have a beautiful, faithful, loving wife already. I don’t need to quit my job in order to chase some illusive dream job from my idyllic twenties, because I already have it. I don’t feel burdened down with weighty responsibilities (mortgage, kids, finances) yearning to be free of them, because the responsibilities I carry are the ones I picked up in the first place. I don’t need to find a plastic surgeon who can alter my exterior, because it is my interior that alters my view of the exterior.

But, it is hard to deny this want or need to shake things up in life.

Maybe my biological clock is ticking.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

As I understand it, Hebrew men in the line of Levi were not allow to perform their levitical (basically priestly) duties until they were thirty years old (they couldn’t read Song of Solomon until thirty either, for more obviously reason.) Then they would minister for 20 years are so, essentially retiring as the “evil days” approached.

So, am I sensing my time running out? Maybe.

This angst is motivating, though. Those things I think that need to change, I am willing to tackle. Those things I have wanted to do, I am willing to make sure happen. Those things I want to stop, I am trying harder to control.

Why?

Because, I am old enough to think some things have to change. Maybe that is the point. I just want to change the right things. It will at least be interesting to live through this yearning and see what changes. Most likely, it will be me.