What causes a midlife crisis – can devotees suffer from it?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Can devotees suffer a midlife crisis? So, what can they do about it? Answer, we shouldn’t think that devotion automatically exempts us from typical circumstantial problems that the material world is beset with. Suppose there is a cholera epidemic, then one’s devotion doesn’t necessarily insulate oneself from the cholera epidemic.
One’s devotion will make one vigilant or should make one vigilant to take the appropriate steps to protect oneself or to cure oneself. That clarity of intelligence, which comes from the mode of goodness, helps one to deal with the issue. It doesn’t necessarily eradicate the issue itself.
So, with respect to physical diseases, we understand this quite easily. However, with respect to inner diseases, that means inner problems, say like psychological issues, we sometimes think that our devotion should protect us from it entirely. It may or it may not because it depends on what kind of psychological issue it is.
So, midlife crisis is typical of the ultra-passionate world that we live in presently where we face lot of issues about how to recognize and reorganize our life in the unending pursuit of goals. If we consider what is exactly midlife crisis, there can be various different aspects. But basically it’s a disheartening form of self-questioning.
Does my life count at all? Is what I am doing worthwhile? Is what I have done till now worthwhile? So, this questioning of one’s self-worth and one’s life worth, one’s work worth, one’s existence worth, that is typical of midlife crisis. When people face a midlife crisis at that time, they can go into depression or they may seek a drastic career course change in the hope of finding something that will be more fulfilling than what they are doing presently. We all have certain dreams, certain goals for us.
Now, if we consider the stage before the midlife and the stage after the midlife, in youth we have the energy and the ambition to pursue many different goals and when pursuing these goals, we seek to engage ourselves busily. Dreams drive us forward. When we go into old age, we are somehow the other force to recognize the limitedness of our capacity to affect changes in the outer world and thereby we learn to focus on, we learn to make peace with the world around us, we learn to make peace with ourselves.
Resenting this way of things around us becomes too much energy, takes too much, drains too much of our energy and we can in a less goal driven way, work towards our gradual satisfaction in what we have. So, in youth, what we will get is what becomes a driving force and that keeps us positive and we could say joyful or at least in the hope of joy. But in old age, what we have achieved, if we can look at it positively, then we get some joy.
In midlife, it’s somewhere in between. There are projects to do and they are important but still we also feel that there is much more to life than simply the pursuit of projects and so we start wondering what should I do? How should I move on? Sometimes whatever work we are doing, that itself doesn’t seem very worthwhile or stimulating. Even if we have some aspects of our life that are worthwhile and stimulating, still we feel that it’s just not worth that.
If we achieve the goal, then it’s done. Unless we set up a second goal, then another goal, that goal loses its capacity to guide our life. And of course, if we don’t achieve that goal, then the sense of failure pushes us down.
So, we were moving along. The fuel for us was achieving something. Not achieving it deflates us and achieving it also deflates us.
Of course, we can always set up a new goal but then over a period of time, we just start saying that, okay, I set up one goal, another goal, another goal and gradually it is becoming just vexing. So, pursuing goals in life is either boring because you don’t find the goal stimulating enough or it is exhausting because it is exhausting and distressing because the goals seem to be too much trouble. Either way, we succumb to our lower side and thus we stay troubled.
The best way out of the situation is to recognize that there are different kinds of goals and we could use drawing from Greek philosophical terms, telec and atelic goals. Telec means it is an adjective coming from teleology. Teleology is meant for some purpose.
So, for example, if I study to crack an exam, then that’s a telec mode of studying. I study it, I pass the exam and it’s done. But atelic way of studying is that I study for the joy of learning.
I study for the joy of absorption. That requires me to develop a greater relationship with the book than with the world. Many times we learn something so that we can exhibit to the world what we have learned and get the plaudits of the world.
But if we develop a deeper relationship with the subject or the book itself, then even if we don’t share that with anyone else, just immersing ourselves in the joy of that book, in the wisdom, the creativity, the artistry that is manifest in that book, that itself gives us satisfaction. And that way we can go beyond the problem of the midlife crisis. The problem of the telec goal.
If we see, if we start seeing our life as more of a telec pursuit, that means in rajo guna, in the mode of passion, Bhagavata says we want to divide things into units and we think of success in terms of completing as many units as possible. But rather than seeing units to be completed as we see in the mode of passion, instead in the mode of goodness we see unity. So see the unity means we see that we are part of a whole and that we are meant to, our life is meant not so much for completing certain units, but for relishing our unity.
Our unity with the whole whose parts we are and whose harmonization with the whole brings satisfaction. The Bhagavad Gita 15.7 states mamai vamsho jeeva loke jeeva bhutah sanatanah manah shishthan indriyani prakratisthani karshati It says karshati, the agitation, the tribulation comes when we let our mind and senses rupture us away from our whole. We are part of the supreme absolute being, the ultimate reality and we are meant to live in a state of loving harmony with that absolute reality.
This inner harmonization will satisfy us and that is what we should be striving for. But when we are misdirected, instead of seeking the inner harmonization, we start seeking outer possession, outer gratification. And this can happen even in devotion.
In devotional life, we look at people and we start asking what is it that needs to be done? We start comparing ourselves with others and seeing oh this person has achieved this much and I have only achieved this much. And this external driven focus is not something which you can entirely give up but if that becomes our controlling force in life, then we set ourselves up for trouble. If instead we see that this external driven force is only one part of our life and that there is much more to our life than this external, then if we can especially at the highest level, we want to connect with Krishna and become lovingly absorbed in him and thereby transcend our dissatisfaction.
Additionally, we can also see if there is something within the realm of bhakti which we can do and which doing it itself gives us satisfaction. Of course, if we get we are human beings who want human reciprocation and thus we will want some external satisfaction also, external recognition of what we are doing. But if that alone is not our driving force, if we learn to move along even in the absence of that, if we learn to spiritualize our consciousness in terms of getting the spirit to do something because we like to do it and especially with spiritual understanding we like to do it for Krishna, then moving, finding that balance between the outward and the inverse is what can help us to gain an intrinsic sense of self-worth.
We will still do external projects but we won’t let the completion of the external projects be our driving force and we won’t let the doing or the not doing of the projects affect our emotions too much because there is a process which I am following and say suppose we like to sing for Krishna, we like to write for Krishna, we like to do our deity worship for Krishna, then just doing it can give satisfaction to us and of course if others come and appreciate that’s wonderful but that’s not what we are primarily looking for and in that way we can slowly but surely become purified and we can steadily move towards growth, towards satisfaction, towards enrichment and fulfillment. So the midlife crisis we could say points to the need to become more inward not in terms of necessarily being withdrawn from the world but more inward in terms of recognizing what is it that we have to contribute to the world rather than simply being driven by the goals the world sets for us even it may be in the devotee community there are certain roles and certain goals that are glamorized but rather than simply pursuing those goals we learn to see what it is that truly counts and how we can best contribute when we learn to thus harmonize with our the way we are made the way we are wired the way we are structured in terms of our psychophysical nature then by shifting more from the telec mode to the italic mode from the goal driven mode to the harmony driven mode this is what I am meant to do and this is what I will do that shifting will enable us to gradually go beyond the midlife crisis