We have all heard the stories – sports cars and bad hair dyes – “Midlife Crisis”. Our culture has institutionalized this idea that for men, the fear of getting older brings on a momentous case of the “stupids”. It is supposed to be based upon waking up one day and realizing that you will never be any younger, never be any more handsome, never be able to jump higher or run faster. A failed and flailing attempt to recapture some aspect of lost youth. I have met very few men that fit neatly into this category.
Most of the men I know go through a very different kind of crisis. At a certain point in life we simply grow tired of easy sounding answers and pathetic platitudes. We long for meaning and a purpose that speaks to the deepest longings of our souls. Tired of busy work and futile redundancy, we long for something progressive and expansive that holds out a hope for lasting significance. I am not trying to recapture the physicality of my youth, but the honest questions of my youth.
I don’t need a “little blue pill” to recapture my potency, but a purpose. I have proven everything that I felt I ever had to prove to other people. Now, I need to know some things for myself. Some real basic issues like, “Why do I exist?’’ and “Does my life have a larger purpose?” It is a vernacular that for some reason sounds trite in the Board Room, but not in the stillness of my heart, “What is the meaning of Life?” Nietzsche, Sartre, Pascal, Socrates, Jesus, the Beatles and Monty Python all wrote about it.
The comedian Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.” It is not that life is too hard, too short, or too brutal. Most men are tough enough. We can take it. It is just that life is too long to have to continue it in futility. Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” I understand the concept of investment. I can invest in my kids, I can invest in my wife, but not if their lives are also transitory and pointless.
Jesus said, in John 10:10, that he came to give us life and that “to the full”. Then in John 17, he defined that life as to know God and Jesus his son. I know that God is supposed to be the biggest impetus to my life, but I don’t know Him well enough to consistently hear His voice over the clamor of distractions that I have continually used to fill the void. I fear that if I don’t care to know God better, I may never be able to walk out my life with any residing sense of purpose and fulfillment.
Maybe that kind of fear could also be the beginning of wisdom. Not a fear of the heart of the Father, which the Bible says is passionately inclined toward me. Just recognition that if I live my life out of sync with the Creator and the author of life, I may miss the greatest possibilities of life that God has for me. That is the crisis. That would be the tragedy. I don’t want to live a life devoid of purpose, a life lacking in significance.
I want my life to matter. I want it to matter to my kids, to my wife, to the world and to myself. I want to do more than pass a biological seed from one generation to another. I want to have passed on a name – a name that God knows. I want to know Christ and to be found in Him and to know Him well enough to walk out the calling that He gave me. I want a purpose and a significance that is eternal. No more busy work….
In Reality 