by Giovanni Cucci
Taulero notes three easy attempts to deal with the crisis: 1) try to change the world; 2) Make continuous external changes; 3) carry out your demanding role with gritted teeth.
The crisis of the middle age calls for a return towards oneself, an awareness of one's underlying fragilities, sometimes denied, or removed, or transferred to other things, such as success, activity, profession, apostolic choices , intellectual, emotional. This moment of arrest is in itself positive, it is an invitation to tell the truth and recover hitherto ignored elements of history and of one's being; it is not for nothing that the grandiose personality type, indicated in psychology with the term narcissist, has more possibilities of benefiting from accompaniment work and self-knowledge after the age of 40: «In the mid-life crisis it is not a question of find a solution to the lack of bodily strength and to put order to new desires and nostalgias that often erupt in this turning point in life. Rather, it is a deeper existential crisis, in which the question is asked about the global meaning of one's being: “Why do I work so much? Why do I risk burnout without making time for myself?” The midlife crisis is by its nature a crisis of meaning" (Grün).
It's as if you had to seriously confront death for the first time, you have the feeling of having reached a point of no return: your strength is failing, your physical appearance changes inexorably, treatments are increased, it's no longer possible. having children, sacrifices are imposed, and one seriously wonders what remains at the end of all this.
Taulero, with the characteristic relevance of the mystic, highlights three easy attempts to deal with the crisis: 1) try to change the world to avoid confrontation with oneself. 2) Making continuous external changes, to the point of abandoning the choice undertaken perhaps many years before (marriage or religious life) trying to "rebuild a life". In reality, these attempts do not touch the root of this concern. The research carried out regarding second (or third) marriages as well as the unions of former priests and religious men and women, indicates that fragility and internal discomfort are perpetuated even in the new situation: the percentage of separations in these cases is almost double compared to the average. Even cohabitations are not a possible alternative, because they show an even greater fragility, recording a relationship dissolution rate ten times higher than marriage.
Meeting another person is not the magic wand or the "pharmacy" capable of filling emotional gaps and resolving personal identity crises. This unresolved situation of discomfort is well illustrated by a saying of the desert fathers, where a monk, no longer able to bear living in his cell, decides to leave, and while gathering his things he sees a shadow next to him who is doing the same. Curious, he asks who he is: "I am your shadow, and if you leave I'll get ready to leave too." 3) No less stressful is the underlying attitude of those who continue to carry out the demanding role with "gritted teeth". In this case, we prefer to remain within the law by rigidifying religious practices, which are mostly observed externally, deluding ourselves that in this way the crisis will not be able to touch and upset the person: in the end, however, we once again find ourselves empty inside. Dynamics tending towards success, rivalry and comparison thus emerge which certainly cannot become channels of expression of charity. In the end, acidity and dissatisfaction risk becoming the underlying mood of one's entire life. Unfortunately, the most immediate and instinctive solutions are often also the most wasteful, ultimately leaving the person in a worse state than the previous one, especially when hasty decisions are made without adequate consideration.
These difficulties must be listened to, not kicked out of the house: they first of all ask for the purification of one's ideals of life, throwing into crisis a voluntaristic vision of spiritual life, where the person is conceived as a soldier who marches with decision towards the battlefield, ready to fight and defeat the enemy: all the merit and weight of what to do lies solely in one's own abilities, it is the fruit of one's own efforts and, consequently, if things do not go as one would like, everything collapses miserably.