The Unexamined Mid-Life

The middle third of your life cycle is like a "black hole," according to Mark Gerzon, author of Coming Into Our Own: Understanding Adult Metamorphosis. "As a result, we don't know what the hell we're supposed to do with those years. They're the lost years of adulthood," he said in a Psychology Today interview.

He wrote this book because, he says, "I had a war going on inside me between the voice that said, 'You're finished growing, you're done, it's a done deal:' and another voice that said, 'You've only begun to explore what life is about.'

"For me, writing this book was a way of strengthening and deepening and consolidating the voice that said, 'You're going to grow for the rest of your life.' That other view that grown ups are done growing is a myth that needs to be retired."

Mid-life feels like a serious either or proposition: Either we change or we die. Acknowledging the hollowness within, even as we succeed externally, challenges our sense of self. But a lot can happen between 40 and 60. YOU get to write the script.