Jung disagreed with Freud that the decisive period in our lives is the first years. Instead, Jung felt that the decisive period is that in which my husband and I are now, the period of our middle years, when we have passed through childhood with its dependency on our parents; when we've weathered the storms of adolescence and the first probings into the ultimate questions; when we've gone through early adulthood with its problems of career and marriage and bringing up our babies; and for the first time in our lives find ourselves alone before the crucial problem of who, after all these years, we are. All the protective covering of the first three stages is gone, and we are suddenly alone with ourselves and have to look directly at the great and unique problem of the meaning of our own particular existence in this particular universe.
I believe it would be the period of time in which we have our "mid-life crisis". It is when we look at our lives and what we've made of it and think that this is the best it's ever going to be.
I think it is an illusion, by the way. Yes, our bodies will only creak and groan a little more from here on out, but as long as we keep thinking, keep our minds open, and keep gaining wisdom, we're just getting started. Here's to the second half of the journey!
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