Psyche & Soul 52: Midlife VIII - (Re) Awakening of Sexuality and Intimacy Needs: Women’s Experience

 

Psyche & Soul 52

Midlife VIII

(Re) Awakening of Sexuality and Intimacy Needs

Women’s Experience

Jose Parappully SDB, PhD

sumedhacentre@gmail.com

Podcast Link:

https://anchor.fm/boscom/episodes/2-52-Psyche--Soul--52-e13d207

Hello, this is Jose Parappully, Salesian priest and clinical psychologist at Sumedha Centre for Psychospiritual Wellbeing at Jeolikote, Uttarakhand with another edition of Psyche & Soul.

In this edition, I present Women’s’ experience of Sexuality and intimacy s at midlife.

 

For a woman, midlife is the period when her sexual drive (arousals, urges) and the demands for sexual pleasure is at their peak. Her sexual drive is awakened in the late twenties or even later and reaches its peak in the late 30’s or early 40’s. Midlife can be for a woman a time of sexual self-discovery, greater sexual enjoyment and adventurism, and sexually speaking, one of the richest and most fulfilling periods in her life. It is quite common for women at this stage to seek outlets for this increased sexual drive and longing for pleasure.

 Experience of Married Women

For married women, age thirty-five begins the dangerous age of potential infidelity. Many midlife married women tend to be dissatisfied with their sexual relationships and may long for sexual intimacies outside marriage. There is ample opportunity for them today at work and elsewhere to mingle with men and the closeness and support they experience can lead to intimate relationships.

 

A wife is most likely to be unfaithful, if ever, in her late thirties and early forties. The desire for extramarital affair coincides with her sexual peak, which for most women as mentioned above, is reached in the late 30’s. Her desire for genital pleasure peaks at a time when her man is experiencing a noticeable decline in his sexual drive.

At midlife a man’s emotional intimacy needs come to the fore, while physical expression and satisfaction become more important to women. This can cause a mismatch in the sexual and intimacy needs of married midlife men and women, leading to discontent and desire for more fulfilling sexual experiences outside marriage. This sexual mismatch is often what leads to divorce, though other reasons may be put forward.

 

William Masters and Virginia Johnson, pioneering sex researchers, point to the increased sexual freedom that a woman enjoys at midlife. When she was younger, her sexual encounters were restricted by sexual inexperience, cultural prohibitions against female sexual indulgence and the pressure to please her male partner. But at midlife, she is more free to seek her own interests, fulfil her own desires unrestricted by cultural expectations. She can now relate sex to her own wishes and needs, seek sexual pleasure the way she wants, experiment and enjoy herself with less inhibition or restraint.

Experience of Celibate Religious Women

“Any man will do!” Anne Marie, a midlife celibate religious woman, said during discussions at a workshop on Psychosexual and Celibate Integration at Midlife. What she meant was that her sexual urges were at times so intense that she would have been happy to have had a sexual experience with any man to satisfy those urges. However, she knew she couldn’t if she was to be faithful to her vows.  Not everyone might experience such intense urges, or dare to admit it in public if they do, but almost everyone experiences some form of sexual awakening or reawakening at midlife..

Many celibate religious women, who had no problems with sexual issues when they joined religious life, usually in late adolescence or early twenties, experience in middle adulthood a new sexual awakening. They can be confused and frightened by these sexual stirrings and longings. They may experience desire for genital intimacy with hitherto unknown intensity as was the case with Anne Marie. In midlife, may be for the first time, they recognise themselves as sexual beings. They may begin to experiment with or express themselves through genital sexual behaviour in response to these stirrings and longings. Some doubt their religious vocation, telling themselves, “If God really wanted me to be a celibate religious, I would not be having these urges and desires.”

The lure of an affair can be true of the religious woman too. Working together with priests and laymen in various capacities is common experience for a woman religious today. Close collaboration and support can lead to an emotional bonding which becomes very satisfying at a time when she is struggling to negotiate the challenges that midlife throws at her. The physical sexual urges she experiences at midlife, can push her to seek genital intimacy as well.

What is said here about the religious woman may also be true of the single woman at midlife. However she may have freedom and avenues for sexual expressions that would not be open to the religious woman committed to celibacy. In this sense the experience of the two may differ.

Implications for Religious Formation

The foregoing has implications for the formation of women religious. Most female candidates enter religious formation in late adolescence or the early twenties. At this time their sexuality has not been awakened yet. When formators question them about their ability to live chaste celibacy, they are likely to answer that it is not a problem for them. They do not as yet know the nature of human sexuality or the cost of celibate chastity. As explained above, it is in their late thirties and early forties that women’s sexual and intimacy needs come to the fore. The young candidates and religious have to be educated about the late emergence of sexual needs and not to be frightened or think they might have made a mistake in regard to their vocation when they begin to experience the stirrings of sexuality at midlife.

It is also important that religious women going through their midlife transition have the opportunity to share their struggles around sexuality and intimacy with trusted and well-informed spiritual guides. This will help them better negotiate the sexual and intimacy challenges of midlife.

Midlife and Menopause

Often women tend to consider menopause as a midlife phenomenon. In reality it is not. Midlife can set in long before menopause. While the average age for menopause today is about 51, for most women the midlife transition occurs in the late 30s to early 40s. Research has shown that there is no relationship between the changes of midlife and menopause.

Most women take menopause in their stride without experiencing too much discomfort or distress. Many of them see menopause as a positive, adaptive life event. For many women menopause appear to bring greater sexual freedom and satisfaction.

Reflection Questions

·         What are the midlife sexual and intimacy dynamics you are currently experiencing or have experienced in the past? How do you feel about these experiences?

·         How can you meet the sexuality and intimacy challenges at midlife in fulfilling ways keeping with your life-status– marital, religious, or single?

Prayer

A scene of expression of great intimacy on the part of a woman is found in three Gospels – (John, 12, 1-8; Mark 14, 3-9; Mathew 26, 6-13). Jesus is so appreciative of the woman’s gestures that he tells those present (in Mark and Mathew), that “wherever the Gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be spoken of, in memory of her.” You could read any of these passages slowly and stay with whatever response/reaction you have to the scene. You could spend then some time speaking to Jesus about these as well as the sexuality, celibacy or intimacy challenges you are facing at this time in your life and listen to what he might have to say to you in response..

 Have safe and happy weekend. Be blessed.

Thank you for listening/reading.

Pictures: Courtesy google Images

Jose Parappully SDB, PhD

sumedhacentre@gmail.com

Psyche & Soul 51: Midlife VII-- (RE-) EMERGENCE OF SEXUALITY AND INTIMACY NEEDS

  Podcast link:

https://anchor.fm/boscom/episodes/2-51-Psyche--Soul--109-e12vsdh

Hello, this is Jose Parappully, Salesian priest and clinical psychologist at Sumedha Centre for Psychospiritual Wellbeing at Jeolikote, Uttarakhand with another edition of Psyche & Soul.

In this edition, I present another important Midlife dynamic, namely, Emergence or Re-Emergence of Sexuality and Intimacy needs.

Midlife is a time of sexual awakening or re-awakening. Sexuality can be experienced at this period in rather intense and surprising ways.  This can lead to confusion, conflicts, pressure to gratify impulses and compromise of commitments. It is important to understand the nature of this awakening or re-awakening.

For some sexuality is awakened at midlife. For some others, it is re-awakened. Some religious, especially women, for example, would have made a religious life choice early in life when their sexuality had not been awakened. Because of the prevailing negative attitudes toward it during formation years, and even later, their sexuality would have remained dormant or repressed and become part of their shadow. Even for those whose sexuality had been awakened before entering religious life, sexuality and intimacy needs would have been later repressed and exiled into the shadow basement for the same reasons. As we saw in the last podcast, whatever is repressed would raise its head at midlife. Hence, there can be re-awakening of this dormant or repressed sexuality.

There is some difference in the way men and women experience this awakening or re-awakening.

MEN’S EXPERIENCE

While late adolescence and early adulthood is the time when the sexual drive (sexual arousals, pressure to gratify sexual impulses) in men is most intense, at midlife men’s sexual need fulfilment shifts to finding mutually fulfilling relationship with a partner and greater emotional connectedness. Hence,  it is in the area of relational intimacy that midlife men experience more challenges.

Impact on Self-Image

Physiological and psychological changes, hormonal changes in particular, have a decisive effect on a man’s sexual experience at midlife. Decreasing testosterone (the male sex hormone) levels brings about a decline in sexual potency. Consequently sexual arousal can be slow and weaker, relaxation occur more quickly, and intervals between arousals become longer. Some may experience embarrassing failures while making love. Since for men in general their success at sexual performance, ability to please their sexual partner and give her pleasure and satisfaction, have a good deal to do with their self-concept, lowered sexual potency can negatively affect their self-image and self-confidence. Many midlife men develop anxieties around their sexual competence and attractiveness to females. They will then tend to re-assure themselves through experimentation and extramarital affairs, usually with younger females.

Impact on Marriage

Weakening male sexual prowess has profound impact on intimacy in marriage. Men become so embarrassed or ashamed of their lowered sexual capacity they dare not speak about it with their partner and instead pull away from any expression of intimacy. Gail Sheehy describes the dynamic:

The longer this problems remains unspoken between a couple, the more monstrous it grows, until there is an eight-hundred pound gorilla in the bedroom. Nobody mentions it for six months, two years, five years; meanwhile the pair stops hugging, stops holding hands, stops touching altogether, moves to separate beds, to separate rooms, and ultimately separate lives. They become estranged in all forms of intimacy because of this sexual shutdown. (Passages in Men’s Lives, p. 15)

Sheehy observes that weakening of sexual potency might actually be the trigger for male midlife transition. Lowered sexual potency strikes at the core of his manly identity and sets in motion a number of the other psychological dynamics of midlife described in the earlier issues.

Impact on Religious Man/Priest

The religious male is not exempt from midlife sexual anxieties and vulnerabilities, even though he has given up conscious gratification of sexual desires and impulses. Since sexual capacities profoundly affect self-concept, decreasing sexual prowess can affect the celibate male’s self-image as well.

Moreover, at midlife, his repressed needs for intimacy also begin to assert themselves. He becomes more receptive to attention and affection showered on him by female admirers and vulnerable to making compromises on his celibate commitment.

Priest psychologist R. Vaughan explains this midlife vulnerability. When the priest or religious brother assesses his years in the priesthood or religious life and compares these with his dream — who he wanted to be and what he wanted to accomplish — it is quite likely that he would be disillusioned. In most cases, his life and ministry would not have turned out as rosy or fruitful as he would have wanted. At this time of self-doubt and disillusion, the company of an understanding woman whose admiration for him bolsters up his self-esteem can become extremely attractive.  Their relationship can become so satisfying that he would be willing to give up what he has cherished for years – his priestly/religious vocation. He can find very many justifications to begin a new life with her.

Often, it is not genital sex, Vaughan observes,  that is the motive here, but the need for emotional intimacy, the longing for a close, tender relationship in which he can express to a trusted other his overly controlled feelings without fear or anxiety. Most men normally disclose little of their inner life to anybody in earlier years. However, in midlife there is inner pressure to give expression to these repressed feelings and longings. An understanding woman, who accepts him totally, and in whose company he can be himself without fear or embarrassment provides him the freedom to give vent to those feelings and longings.

It has been found that many, if not most, priests and religious who leave their ministries and communities and marry do so in midlife. The results of a survey by Franciscan psychologist Oviedo showed that more than two-thirds of perpetually professed men religious who abandon their religious commitment do so in middle age:  37.8% in the age group 31-40 and 33.0% in the age group 41-50. Significantly, the survey found that 42% of those who leave do so because of affective and intimacy problems.

Midlife Challenge

One challenge for religious men at midlife is to fulfil their intimacy needs, by developing satisfying close relationships with men and women, without compromising their celibate commitments.

It is important for religious men and priests experiencing midlife sexuality and intimacy challenges to find a trustworthy spiritual guide, with whom they can share their experiences and find guidance. This is equally true also for laymen struggling with sexuality and intimacy issues at midlife. When a spiritual guide is not available, honest sharing with a trusted friend can also help.

It is also important that one does not take hasty life-choice decisions when caught up in the emotional turbulence created by awakened or re-awakened sexuality and intimacy dynamics at midlife, especially without proper guidance and discernment.

Women’s experience of sexuality and intimacy issues at midlife will be presented in the next weekend’s podcast.

Reflection Exercise

·         What does this article evoke in you?

·         What are the midlife sexual and intimacy dynamics you are currently experiencing or have experienced in the past?

·         How do you feel about these experiences and the way you handled them?

Prayer

There is a post resurrection story in the Gospel of John (Ch. 20, 11-28) which presents expression of deep intimacy that Mary of Magdala experiences in regard to Jesus of Nazareth. You could read this passage slowly and stay with this scene for a while, be in touch with whatever it evokes in you, and speak to Jesus about these as well as about your own joys and struggles around intimacy.

Have a blissful and safe weekend. Be blessed.

Thank you for listening/reading.

 Pictures: courtesy Google Images

Jose Parappully SDB, PhD

sumedhacentre@gmail.com

 

Psyche & Soul 50: Midlife VI- REDEEMING THE “SHADOW”

 Podcast link:

https://anchor.fm/boscom/episodes/2-50-Psyche--Soul--107-e12iaqg

Hello, this is Jose Parappully, Salesian priest and clinical psychologist at Sumedha Centre for Psychospiritual Wellbeing at Jeolikote, Uttarakhand with the 50^th Edition of Psyche and Soul.

In this edition I shall talk about the redemption of the Shadow at Midlife.

 

Midlife is the time when the shadow makes its presence felt. Carl Jung used the term “shadow” to describe that part of our personality that is repressed because it conflicts with the way we wish to see ourselves and be seen by others. It is that part of our personality we are now unaware of because it was  deemed incompatible with our ideal personality and has been conveniently forgotten.

Shadow Formation

Our real self consists of both light and shadow, goodness and ugliness. We have our “angels and demons” –aspects that we admire and appreciate and feel good about and their opposites. Goodness and evil are both residents of our psyche and soul. As writer Henry Nouwen loved to remark, “Where God appears, the evil one is also present.”

However, we tend to hide our demons and would like to appear all angel. So, we create our “persona.” In our effort to conform to social expectations, we try to present ourselves to the world in the way the world wants us to be. To live up to an idealistic self-image we suppress aspects of our personality that do not fit the self-image. This image of ourselves that we consciously cultivate and project in order to be and seen in a particular way is our persona.

For example, we and others may have an idealistic image of who a good priest or religious needs to be. We may discover that there are characteristics in us, such as our anger, lust for power, tendency to gossip or our sexual desires that do not fit that image. We suppress these consciously; after a while we forget we suppressed them (Tell a lie over and over and after a while we ourselves will begin to believe it to be the truth!) and they become part of our unconscious. They get swept under the veneer of our proper self. The proper self that we present to the world becomes our persona. In creating the persona, many aspects of our lives get repressed, split off from our conscious self and awareness. These repressed aspects become the “shadow.”

The persona, that masks our real self (Persona originally referred to the mask worn by actors in Greek theatre to represent a character), is not all bad; it does serve a useful purpose. It helps us to adapt to the demands of our social and cultural circumstances. We cannot always say what we really feel, or act on every impulse regardless of circumstances. However, problems arise when we identify with the persona and begin to believe that we are the front or the mask that we present to the outer world, and we lose awareness of our true reality, especially the unacceptable aspects of our personality.

The more we identify with an overly good or righteous persona, the darker will be our shadow. Those of us who are religious or priests are especially vulnerable to shadow formation because our vocation involves commitment to very high spiritual values and standards of moral conduct. Understanding of religious life as a call to “perfection” or the priesthood as becoming another Christ, makes us supress anything in us that prevents us from appearing perfect or Christlike. Thus, we can easily supress our angry feelings or our sexual feelings and longings and send these into the deepest basements of our psyche and soul, to become part of our shadow world.

Destructiveness of Shadow

What is destructive about unrecognised shadows is that they continue to be operative in our lives even though we are unaware of their existence. They drive our conscious behaviour, often in dysfunctional and even destructive ways.

When we are surprised by some of our unexpected unbecoming behaviours, it could be a pointer to a shadow. We might have cultivated the image of a gentle, sensitive, patient, understanding and compassionate human being. But during a conversation with someone whose behaviour we are disapproving, we suddenly burst into rage and begin to castigate the person using pretty strong language. In our sober moment, we ask, “What was that? How could I behave like that?” Well, that was our shadow, our repressed anger and resentment breaking through, embarrassing us and shocking others.

Shadow Integration

In midlife we experience the call to live life authentically, to be who we really are, to break out of the tyranny of social expectations. In midlife we hear the invitation from our “soul”— our deep, authentic self --, to recognize our unlived life, our deepest longings that we had repressed.

As the American poet Robert Bly observed, we spend the first half of our lives dissociating the unacceptable parts of ourselves and packing them into the invisible “shadow bag” that we carry on our back. In the second half of life we are invited to collect them back and make them part of our conscious self, and empty that heavy bag that slows down our journey toward wholeness.

 During midlife unresolved issues of the past, and feelings buried for years deep in the recesses of the psyche can re-emerge from the unconscious and demand our attention.  For those of us committed to a celibate lifestyle, our sexuality in particular, often resides in the shadow. Hence owning up and integrating (not acting out) our sexuality and intimacy needs into our conscious self becomes an important midlife task. 

Openness to the experience of intimacy helps us to process many aspects of our self that reside in the shadow. In genuine intimacy we have the freedom to be ourselves, to be “psychologically naked” before the other. We can bare our heart and soul to the other without fear or embarrassment. In that kind of freedom and openness, many aspects of our self that were suppressed rise to the surface of consciousness. We can then process them with our friend and integrate them.

Thomas Keating, Trappist monk and psychologist, highlights this aspect of intimacy: “One characteristic of love,” he wrote, “is that it reduces our defences. When our defences go down, the dark side of our personality emerges. One important aspect of true friendship is the willingness to help each other process that material.” (Intimacy with God, p. 72)

Shadow and Spiritual Life

Acceptance and integration of the shadow can have profound impact on our spiritual life. Jung considered shadow-work so important to the health of the soul that he considered it a religious undertaking.  In his psychology, getting to know the shadow is a way of redeeming all the rejected and lost parts of the soul.

With the acceptance of the darkness within ourselves, we can become more accepting of others’ weakness and become more compassionate. We also become more free to be ourselves, with genuine self-acceptance based on a more realistic sense of self. We recognise that we need not be perfect for God to love us; we could be who we are, with our angels and demons. The result is a quantum leap on the spiritual path. Jungian analysts Wilkie Au and Noreen Cannon describe the process as follows in the book Urgings of the Heart (p. 41)

For as we look at what frightens and shames us and come to know the pain that made us reject ourselves in the first place, we become newly receptive to God’s healing grace…. As God’s love for those wounded parts of us sinks in, we are able, perhaps for the first time, to love ourselves, dark side and all. We also find ourselves more able to reach out in love and compassion to others because we are less self-righteous and judgmental.

As another Jungian analyst, Robert Johnson, has pointed out, “To honour and accept the shadow is a profound spiritual discipline. It is whole-making and thus holy and the most important experience of a lifetime” (Owning Your Own Shadow, p. x).

Reclaiming what has been lost in the shadow is an essential aspect of the inner journey we need to undertake at midlife. To do so we need to listen to the inner voices that have been silenced, feel the feelings that have been deadened, and sense their yearnings. This necessitates slowing down the pace of life and creating solitude in which what is hidden away in the unconscious can slowly emerge into consciousness and being brave enough to acknowledge their presence and integrate them into our conscious persona.

Introspection

Honest answers to the following questions can point to our shadow:

1. What unacceptable desires and impulses rise to consciousness unexpectedly in our solitudes?
2. What are the embarrassing “slips of the tongue” we make?
3. Who are the ugly or disreputable characters that appear in our dreams?
4. What is it that we intensely dislike or hate in another person or provoke our self-righteous indignation?

 Prayer

When Jesus speaks about the log in our eyes (Mathew 7, 3-5), he was essentially referring to our shadow- something we are not aware of. You could read that passage and stay a while in the presence of God or Jesus himself and ask them to help you recognize and redeem your shadows. And then sit quietly attending to whatever emerges into awareness. End the prayer thanking God for what you have been able to recognise.

May your weekend be happy and safe. Be blessed.

Thank you for listening/reading.

Pictures: Google Images

Jose Parappully SDB, PhD

sumedhacentre@gmail.com 

 

Psyche & Soul 49: Midlife V - DE-ILLUSIONING

 Psyche & Soul 49

Midlife – V

DE-ILLUSIONING 

JOSE PARAPPULLY SDB, PhD

Podcast link:

https://anchor.fm/boscom/episodes/2-49-Psyche--Soul--105-e124ghn

  

Hello, this is Jose Parappully, Salesian priest and clinical psychologist at Sumedha Centre for Psychospiritual Wellbeing at Jeolikote, Uttarakhand, with another edition of Psyche & Soul.

 

In this weekend’s edition I shall focus on an important midlife dynamic, namely, De-Illusioning.

It is quite likely that assessment of life, particularly of our dreams, can lead to de-illusioning – a shattering of our unrealistic and idealistic notion of life, our illusions. As we come to midlife we recognise that long held assumptions about self, others and the world are not really true. We recognise that many things that were taught to us as truth were actually lies.

At midlife we recognize that life does not move the way we would want it to, that there are things over which we do not have control, that people are not who we thought they would be, that we ourselves are not who we had thought we are.

We realise that we are not able to do what we want to, change what we would like to change. We recognise our limitations.

 As psychologist C. S. Pearson observes, “We are called to give up the illusion that we can force life to fit our scripts, that we can shape other people to match our expectations, or that we can make ourselves fit our own image of who we want to be” (The Hero Within, p. 118).

In the first half of life we are driven to pursue idealised dreams, the impossibly high goals and standards we set for ourselves, often as compensation for the powerlessness we experienced in childhood. We are lured by an immature mind to believe in fantasies of limitlessness, that we can achieve anything if only we try hard enough. This is a lie that is told to us often, and by many people around us. By midlife we may have tried very hard indeed, and we only experienced failure, may be again and again.

We realize that there is ugliness in the world. Our misconceptions about goodness of creation and goodness of people lead to rude shocks. We realize that evil can triumph over goodness no matter whatever our belief in a benign God and God’s control over everything.

As Annie Dillard, famous for her account of the lessons life had taught her when she spent time in seclusion in a wood by the side of a stream, wrote: “That something is everywhere and always amiss is part of the very stuff of creation.” (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, p. 184). Creation is indeed beautiful. However there are many ugly things in it we wish weren’t there. Unpleasant and tragic things happen. Often we can only be mute spectators - unable to do anything to make a difference. The relentless march of the coronavirus throwing our lives and our plans haywire is a telling example of this.

The keen observation of the lifelong explorer of the mythical landscape, Joseph Campbell, that we can spend decades climbing the ladder, only to realise later that the ladder was placed on the wrong wall expresses another aspect of de-illusioning. That is, we can with passion and doggedness pursue a goal which we eventually realize is unreachable or not worth pursuing. The wrong wall can be the dreams of our parents, and uncritically accepted social expectations, or a personal ambition or dream which at one time appeared glorious but now appears meaningless not worth pursuing.

The inevitable disappointments, failures and betrayals of hope, and shattered dreams eventually chip away the larger-than-life self-image built on the ambitions of youth and fantasies of unlimited success. By midlife we are forced to come down to earth from the clouds, adopt a more realistic view of self with all its fragility and limitations, and of the world with its brokenness and ugliness. We are forced to modify beliefs in the inherent goodness of humanity through a recognition and acceptance of the fact that goodness is often accompanied and even overcome by hate and destructive forces. Our trusted self-definitions, and long held assumptions about life collapse in the face of harsh realities of life. We are forced by our experience to de-illusion.

As psychologist James Hollis observes, “…the person in the second half of life is obliged to come to a more sober wisdom based on a humble sense of personal limitations and the inscrutability of the world” (Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, p. 85)

 An Example

An instructive example of de-illusioning is found in the Oscar award winning song “I dreamed a dream” from the musical Les Miserables. In the story there is a young woman, Fantine, who dreamed of a glorious life together with the young man with whom she had fallen in love. But things turned out very differently, as she laments at her death bed, “I dreamed a dream in days gone by, when hopes were high and life worth living. I dreamed that love would never die…. He slept one summer by my side, he filled my days with endless wonder. … But when autumn came he was gone.” The fruit of that summer of love and togetherness was a baby girl, Corsette, whom she had now to bring up as a single-mother.

Fantine takes up a job in a garment factory to earn her living. However, the foreman there was more interested in her body than in her work. When Fantine refused to oblige his lascivious desires, she was thrown out. She was literally on the street, working as a prostitute to feed herself and her little girl. Her miserable life ultimately took her young life. She fell sick. On her death bed she sang, “There are dreams that cannot be, and there are storms we cannot weather…I dreamed that my life would be so different from this hell I am living, so different from what it seems. … Now life has killed the dream… I dreamed.” Life can turn out very different from what we thought it would be. Recognition and acknowledgment of this reality is de-illusioning.

 Disillusioning can come in many guises. Each of us can recall our own version.

 Consequences

 The consequence of de-illusioning, on one hand, can be very negative. It can lead to resentment, anger bitterness and a loss of passion and enthusiasm. However it can be also very liberating. We can be liberated from the tyranny of lofty ambitions and unrealistic expectations. Recognition that we do not control the world, that frailty and flaws are part of the human condition, can make us more accepting and tolerant of these in ourselves and others, and become less self-righteous and more compassionate and forgiving toward self and others. This is one of the more positive growth experiences of midlife.

Reflection Exercise

·         Has de-illusioning been part of your midlife experience? If yes, in what way?

·         What are some of your illusions that have been shattered? How did they shatter?

·         What has been the consequence for you of such shattering? — Disappointment or liberation?

·         Are there still illusions you are holding on to? Which? What do you need to do about these? 

Prayer

A telling example of de-illusioning is found in Sacred Scripture. One of the saddest phrases in all of scripture for me is found in the story of the disillusioned disciples on the road to Emmaus. “We had hoped…” the two men tell the stranger who had joined their conversation (Luke, 24, 21). They had hoped that the Galilean would be the one to set Israel free from the tyranny of Rome. But their hopes were shattered on that depressing Friday afternoon when they saw him die on the cross. The story had ended. Their hope shattered. “We had hoped…. But….!”

We could read and stay with this passage for a while, and talk to Jesus who accompanies us on our own lonely journeys and listens to and talks to us as he did with the disillusioned disciples. We might gain some surprising insights when we do this.

 

May your weekend be happy and safe. Be blessed.

Thank you for listening/reading.

Pictures: Courtesy Google Images

Jose Parappully SDB, PhD

sumedhacentre@gmail.com