A New Direction for My Life, #3: Is Now The Right Moment?
If we look around at the situation now with respect to the pandemic, the moment seems unique. We feel a sense of possibility, and maybe even new direction.
Our inner cynic might ask, “So, what’s really so special about this moment?” Well, throughout this series on finding a new direction for my life, we’ve noted the strong sense with which we’ve all been living that we are hemmed in by limitations that we can’t do much to control. Yet now, there seems to be a different feeling, a changed atmosphere. Some might say that it’s the result of the arrival of the season of nice weather, with people who’ve had too much “cabin fever” desperate to be out and about. Is that all it is?
It might seem that way. It’s certainly true, at least in my part of the world that people are out and about, in very large numbers. As restrictions lift, the highways are crowded, and the stores are packed, and there’s a tremendous sense of energy, bound up for too long. It strongly seems like this energy wants to flow out into the world. That surge in all of us may not know exactly where it really wants to go, or what it wants to do there, but it’s a reality in our collective social lives. It as if the life is starting to flow back into our common life, rather like the blood flowing back into an arm or leg that has “gone to sleep”.
However, saying this is not the same thing as saying that “everything is coming up roses”. While many people are coming back into the public sphere in ways we haven’t seen for quite some time, this is not true of everyone. Just as happens with a limb that has gone to sleep, when the life flows back into it, the sensations at first may not be all that pleasant. There are many people, for instance, who are experiencing a deep genuine reluctance to leave their homes and venture back into anything resembling public space. For people in this position, the anxiety or fear associated with yet “another transition” may be disempowering and overwhelming.
What are we to make of this moment in our lives? What are we supposed to do with it?
What Do You Want Now?
This moment that we’re experiencing may well have some unique characteristics. There’s a strong sense shared by many, whether expert social commentators and academics, or ordinary people, that this is a moment when things are in a highly unusual state of flux. Some, such as Harvard Professor and former U.S. ambassador to NATO Nicolas Burns, have said that the situation is comparable to what has occurred when the world has gone through a world war. Whether that is exactly correct or not, it’s clear that the world has been through, and is going through a lot—and so are individual people.
We have all faced some very unusual, demanding and stressful times. Yet now it seems that things may be making a shift, and that the world, or at least our part of the world, may be moving back toward something that in many ways looks a lot more like pre-pandemic normal. Yet we would be wise to look at the ways in which our current situation isn’t exactly normal.
For instance, if we think about the economic impact of the pandemic, some surprising facts come to light. When the pandemic began, many—rightly—feared its potential economic impact. And for many, there has been a very significant downside in lost jobs, or reduced compensation or benefits. Yet, paradoxically, as a recent CBC article underscored,
“Canadians have saved a record amount during the pandemic, resulting from the combined impact of reduced spending and collecting more money from government support programs.“
CBC “Average Canadian Saved More in the Pandemic”, 21 June / 21
Similarly, there is apparently strong evidence to indicate that Canadian workers, who have been working virtually throught the pandemic, are not necessarily all that eager to return to working full-time 9 to 5 at the office. A recent study by Leger and the Association for Canadian Studies has shown that fully 80% of Canadians have found working from home to be partially or fully positive, and only 20% are looking forward to returning to the office full-time. There is a strong indication that employers may have difficulty finding employees who want full-time in the office, and that employers may be offering a variety of options for work in order to retain and attract the employees that they want.
So, in the near future, many people may be confronted with opportunities to move in some new directions. THe option may be there to reshape their work life, together with the question of what they really want to do with their money to create new value in their lives. In short, we may be in a moment when many people will be confronted with possibilities that might not have seemed viable prior to the pandemic. What will we choose? How will we live our lives?
Visualizing What Could Be
Archetypal psychologist C.G. Jung often used a word that he borrowed from the ancient Greeks: kairos. In ancient Greek, this word means “the right, critical, or opportune moment.” Could this moment of the end of the pandemic be a kairos moment for many of us? A moment when there might be an opportunity for choice that moves our lives in the direction of what we really value? It might be important for us to consider this possibility.
If that is a genuine possibility, this may be a time when it’s essential to approach our lives with some real clear-sightedness. I would suggest that this clear-sightedness might need to take two forms.
First, we need to be as clear-sighted as possible about our outer reality. We need to see clearly what we are up against in terms of our outer situation. What really is going on in terms of our work life or our home life or our social life? And can we get past our prejudice or our habitual ways of thinking a perceiving, and possibly be open to some new options for our lives, options that this kairos moment may have brought to us. Examining some of these options might really increase our anxiety level, initially, but there may be options for our lives and work that we might not have previously considered.
The second form of clear-sightedness is an inner form that stems from our inmost yearnings. Do we have the capacity to visualize what we really want, what we really yearn for? In this culture, it can be easy for us to let advertising and the media dictate to us what it is that we want. If we do, it’s possible that we might end up with a very conventional, rather shallow set of hopes and aspirations for ourselves that doesn’t really reflect our inner uniqueness—the core of who we are. We need to be conscious of the things that attract us deeply, even if the rest of the world is prepared to dismiss them as silly, trivial or impractical. In your heart of hearts, what is it that you really want for your life?
A New Direction for My Life
Life may be calling us to use this unique moment of life transition to move our lives in the direction of our deepest hopes and aspirations. If so, life may be offering us quite an adventure and a challenge!
To move our lives towards our deepest aspirations requires that we know ourselves to an increasing degree. Not only that, it requires that we accept ourselves, and value ourselves—love ourselves, in fact. This requires a dedication of time and energy to observing ourselves, wondering about ourselves, expressing ourselves and exploring our own nature. From this place, we can then make changes in our outer reality, to bring it more into accord with our inner reality and the objects and yearnings that are really the most important to us.
A genuinely open and supportive relationship with a Jungian /a-midlife-transition can often be of great healing benefit on this personal odyssey.
Wishing you every good thing for your journey towards wholeness,