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Turning 50

Because time itself is like a spiral, something special happens on your birthday each year: The same energy that God invested in you at birth is present once again – Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson

I just turned 50 a month ago.

My beautiful wife threw a birthday party for me at my in-laws beach house on the shores of Lake Erie, about fifteen miles from my fair city of Buffalo, New York, also known by locals as The City of No Illusions, the origins of which remain unknown to me.

You get a real sense of your age when all the tunes cranked out by the live band at your birthday gala are all from the sixties and seventies. No Lady GaGa tracks at this hoopla, but lots of gag gifts for the old geezer.

There’s Something About the Number

There is something momentous about turning 50. We all crunch numbers, don’t we. Those who have joined the 50 club seek a sort of mathematical revelation about its meaning: A half-century of 200 changes of the seasons, 600 full moons that have passed through the night skies from my boyhood until now.

It’s been two years since I’ve blogged about my 30^th High School Return. As I drove to that event, it was like a time tunnel back to my younger self as Bachman Turner Overdrive wailed “Taking Care of Business” as I barreled down Route 78, my thinning hair flying with the breeze kicking in through my car’s window.

My dad died at age fifty-six, about six year older than I am now. That was over 30 years ago. I wonder what he thought about turning 50. I will never know.

Obama, George Clooney, Boy George and Eddie Murphy all heard the fifty gun salute this year. Fame does not delay the passing of the years, though good makeup may.

The acclaimed poet, Billy Collins, on the occasion of his 50^th Birthday, wrote:

But I keep picturing the number, round and daunting:

I drop a fifty-dollar bill on a crowed street,

I carry a fifty-pound bag of wet sand on my shoulders.

I see fifty yearlings leaping a fence in the field.

I fan the five decades before me like a poker hand.

Taking Stock

We all look backwards at 50 through the rearview mirror. We take stock of the climb from diapers to degrees, from backpacks to briefcases, from youthful meanderings to mid-life muddling.

We all remember our parents at this ripe age. They seemed so old, didn’t they? We look at ourselves in the mirror and, seemingly overnight, we have become . . . well . . . old.

My hair recedes like the waves going back out to sea, my joints crack and my energy flags around 9:30 at night. Warm milk? Not necessary as my AARP (I just got my unsolicited card in the mail) brain softly whispers to me, “Goodnight Dan”.

Life has brought plenty of trouble, pain and suffering to all of us by 50; curve balls, losses and betrayals of all types. In the balance, it’s also graced us with unadulterated joy, irony, whimsy, mischief and love. We are all challenged to learn from the negative and practice gratitude for the many blessing that have been bestowed on us and those we care about it.

I savor the words of Dag Hammarskjold, former Secretary General of the United Nations, from his book Markings, “For all that has been – Thanks. For all that shall be – Yes.”

There is a grace that comes at 50 that I didn’t have at 30 or 40; a sense of being at home in my own skin. My bones, like the roots of a mature tree in an old-growth forest, have sunk deep into the rich, brown soil. Like all people, I’ve weathered many storms. While I know that there are sure to be more to come, I have faith that I’ll still be standing after they’ve pass, that the barometric pressure will rise and that I’ll be walking in the sun again.

We hope by age 50 that we’ve becoming wiser. That in taking stock of our lives at the three-quarter turn of the track, we are able to distill something essential about how to live a good life.

True Grit

I think there’s some grit that comes at the half-century mark. We have less tolerance of others’ bullshit and, hopefully, our own. Having lived long enough, we know the truth even if we can’t articulate it. I admire people who can tell the truth with wit, irony, humility and a sense of decency. They don’t belittle others, nor are they arrogant or closed-minded about contrarian views. I always walk away from such people enlightened by such people and marvel that in speaking their own truth they give permission for others to speak theirs as well.

Maybe few of us tell the truth all the time. So don’t be so hard on yourself. But bites and pieces of it well chewed, like my grandmother’s sweet potato pie, make for good digestion.

Garrision Keillor, of A Prairie Home Companion fame, wrote in Things to Do When You Turn 50:

“Start telling the truth. In small doses at first and then gradually build up to one out of three, a decent batting average. When you’re young, you’re scared, you’re trying to wend your way through the trees and not get shot at, you’re trying to stay on the warm side of the various big cheeses in your life, you’re wanting to be the good guy who everybody loves, not the jerk with the big mouth. But when you hit 50, you’re entering a new passage of life in which you can say what you really think.”

The Speed of Time

We all look forward to events on the horizons of our lives. For a guy like me that just turned 50, it’s retirement sometime in the not so distant future and a day when I won’t be father to a 12 year old daughter, but to a twenty-something woman walking down the aisle with her sixty-something dad.

As you head into the fifty-something territory, others of the same age spontaneously lament and wax that time is moving more quickly the older you get. This conversation can take place with perfect strangers at Starbucks. I sense that it might be okay to have this middle-aged banter with someone because I can usually tell their approximate age by looking at them: thinning hair, a slightly craggy face and the look in their eyes that they’ve known just how tough life can be.

There is a recognition of our finitude, that time is precious, that we don’t have forever to take running leaps towards our dreams.

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computers, spoke to a Stanford graduating class as their commencement speaker in 2005.

Shortly before then, he has been diagnosed, treated and recovered from pancreatic cancer, a cancer that would take his life some six years later. Not mincing words, he told the class that we will all die. This wasn’t meant to be morbid, he told them. But a recognition that time is precious and not to be squandered. Our mortality gives us the motivation to find out what we love to do and do it.

Americans often associate this with finding a job they love. No doubt a noble endeavor. Yet most people do not find a job they love and often toil at average paying jobs that bring only a modicum of happiness, if any at all. But they labor on supporting themselves and their families seeking refuge in the solace of forests, a great book, a ball game and in making their spouse and children happy.

Much wisdom can be culled from our years of living to 50. We learn to see what’s really important and what is, by comparison, trivial at best. More than anything, I know this much is true: the decency and dignity with which we carry ourselves everyday trumps everything else that happens to us.

We All Have Choices

We all have choices and we need to be reminded of this over and over. Life will spare no one suffering. Some of us by mid-life will have suffered grievously: the loss of a spouse or loved one to cancer, the undeserved loss of a job and means to support oneself or, as I’ve written at some length before, episodes of depression.

But in my life time, I’ve learned that suffering does not have the final say. That we do have a large say about what suffering means to us and our relationship to it.

Brother David Steindl-Rast, writes in his book, Deeper than Words:

“Our human dignity hinges on the right use of freedom. The converse is the abuse of freedom. Fearing that, should we then want freedom to be eliminated so as to get rid of suffering? No freedom, no love; no love, no meaning; the worst possible suffering: meaningless. The only way off this dead-end road lies in the opposite direction love can give meaning even to suffering – and so overcome it.”

Yes, our life, if it is to have true meaning, is finally to be used to love and serve others. For when we pass, we will not be remembered in others’ hearts so much for our accomplishments, but for the love we have given and shared with others. You can bet on that.

Where does the Rat Race Lead Us To?

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Lawyers are very busy people. They multi-task like a short order cook flipping pancakes in a busy diner. First or second gear is simply not an option.

Speed becomes a large problem for the depressed lawyer. The murky bog of depression short circuits a lawyer’s capacity to move, think and act quickly; everything takes longer and is incredibly more difficult to accomplish. We see our work getting away from us, but are pinned down in a foxhole. Depression is spraying bullets at us as we feel them whizzing by our heads. So we stay stuck in this foxhole, unable to gain traction to meet our daily demands.

I think there’s a couple different ways to look at the lack of productivity in our work; whether it’s due to depression or not. Since you’re reading this blog, your difficulty in pumping out the paperwork is likely due, at least in part, to depression. It may also be that you just don’t like your job, the type of law you practice or are even dream of quitting the profession. What the precise cause or causes are need to be sorted out with a good therapist and wise friends.

For example, is the work slow down due to a neurochemical mix-up in your brain affecting your ability to concentrate? Or, is it a general malaise which suggests that you’re just burnt out and tired of all the bullshit? They’re really different animals.

Depression treatment, because it involves a real impairment in our ability to function as lawyers, must involve care which tries to return us to some normal or pre-depression levels of functioning. I like to imagine it as the ascent of a diving bell to the ocean’s surface.

Burnout, on the other hand, has been defined by experts as situational exhaustion and helplessness that’s usually specific to our job or burdensome task. We’re asked to do work that’s beyond our capacity to get it done. It’s not defined as a psychiatric “illness” per se like depression and usually demands a different kind of healing approach.

But what if we aren’t “technically” depressed, at least not in a clinical sense, or burned out? What if the real spur in our saddle is that we’re just unhappy in our lives as lawyers? We may find ourselves yearning for a greater sense of fulfillment and happiness in our daily lives, but it all seems so illusive. As a result, we keep doing what we already know how to do: put the old nose to the grindstone, try to just survive the blowtorch-like stress and drama and, hopefully, find some semblance of happiness.

Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D., a Harvard professor and author of the book “Happier,” says that how we go about searching for happiness is an important part of finding it. He identifies four archetypes – or patterns of behaviors and attitudes – with which we pursue happiness. One of the patterns he identifies is the “Rat Race Archetype.” This pattern of behaviors and attitudes “. . .sacrifices present enjoyment in order to be happy in the future.”

As applied to law students, lawyers and judges, we do well in law school to get that well paying job that requires an eighty-hour work week. We’re supposed to be happy because that’s why we sacrificed so much of our time and energy to get to where we are or want to be. But more often, we find that “the sense of fulfillment disappears, though the drudgery remains,” says Ben-Shehar.

Paradoxically, outsiders may regard the rat-racer as a paragon of success. “Others may even see him/her as a role model for younger children, suggests Ben-Shehar:

“’See, if you work hard, you can be successful like [Bob] too.’” But Bob actually pities these children, but cannot imagine what alternatives there are to the rat race. He does not even know what to tell his children: Not to work hard in school? Not to get good grades? Not to get a good job? Is being successful synonymous with being miserable? Being a hard worker is not the same as being a rat racer; there are supremely happy people who work long hours and dedicate themselves to their schoolwork or to their profession. What differentiates rat racers is their inability to enjoy what they are doing – and their persistent belief that once they reach a certain destination, they will be happy.”

There’s no easy remedy to counter the rat race archetype in the legal profession. Yet, I feel that offering some insight into the problem can lead us to think differently about our predicament. After all, insight is one of the major goals of all psychotherapy. Such insight may even result in our making small or large changes in how we structure our daily law practice. We need to reassess the motivation that is running our lives; the “why” of what we do and not so much the “what.” Lawyers complain about what they have to put up with: the demanding clients, impatient judges, opposing counsel who (we swear!) has it in for us or the Himalayan-like stack of papers on our desk. Yet, we don’t often ask ourselves where this “putting up with” approach is leading to.

Our society rewards doers, especially in the legal profession.

“We learn to focus on the next goal,” say Ben-Shahar, “rather than our present experience and chase the ever-elusive future our entire lives. We are not rewarded for enjoying the journey itself but for the successful completion of a journey. Society rewards results, not processes; arrivals, not journeys. Once we have arrived at our destination, once we attain our goal, we mistake the relief that we feel for happiness. The weightier the burden we carried on our journey, the more powerful and pleasant is our experience of relief. When we mistake these moments of relief for happiness, we reinforce the illusion that simply reaching goals will make us happy. While there is value in relief – it is a pleasant experience and it is real – it should not be mistaken for happiness.”

If our legal life is a series of moments of relief, we will not experience much happiness. I had to learn this one the hard way. I needed to reassess: why was I doing what I was doing? When I was honest with myself, I found that I saw completing my work as, primarily, a source of relief. I had become a very good lawyer, but much of my motivation was spurred on by this motivation; of flopping onto the sofa at the end of the day and thinking, “Thank God that’s over.”

Happiness, in some sense, seemed unrealistic to me before. I now believe that thinking of happiness as unrealistic is a small box view in a big box world of possibilities. We can change our motivation from one of chasing cheese to one of seeing that life happens in the present moment and not some future success. Our life is really a series of moments, isn’t it? And if we bet the house on the American anthem of “no pain, no gain” to obtain some future level of success, we may find that we end up not where we really, truly want to be.

Managing Your Depressive Symptoms Is Not Enough

If you have been living with depression long enough, you will inevitably face the question of whether managing your depression is enough. Many lawyers dealing with depression (and there are 200,000 in America) are struggling to get rid of their symptoms of depression. I understand the value and necessity of this all too well. But once the symptoms seem manageable, what next?

In his book, What Happy People Know, psychologist, Dan Baker, offers his criticisms of much of modern day psychology: “Clinical psychology – the treatment in a clinical setting of people with mental disorders – was begun with great fanfare as an adjunct to modern medicine in the late 1800s. It was patterned after the conventional medical model of fighting pathology. Clinical psychology was based on the assumption that most people are mentally healthy – and happy- but some people contract mental pathologies that conform to neat diagnostic compartments, and require standardized treatments. The only problem is that it doesn’t work very well. It fails approximately two-thirds of the time.” As I write, let it be known that I attend therapy twice per month!

There is a great debate worldwide about the causes of depression. Most agree that it is a complex condition related to a combination of factors both genetic and environmental. While there is value in thinking about depression as a disease of sorts – say on par with diabetes or heart disease – there is a real danger to as well. That’s because it isn’t just a “disease;” it’s also a psychological and spiritual malady. If those aspects aren’t addressed, those who suffer from it may never taste the wonder and joy of life. They are left with the discontent of a life where they are only managing their depressive symptoms. Don’t we have the right to expect more?

Dr. Baker central point is that the approach of clinical psychology was not designed to help people find happiness. “It assumed that if mental illness were cured, happiness would naturally follow, as the normal human condition. But that doesn’t happen for the vast majority of people.” He continues, “I believe that even when people do not have diagnosable psychological illness, they still cannot be considered psychologically healthy unless they are happy. The absence of disease is not the same as health, just as the absence of poverty is not the same as wealth.” For a further exploration of the issue of happiness, see the interesting article in The Atlantic Magazine, “What Makes Us Happy” by Joshua Wolf Shenk. Interesting, Mr. Shenk is the author of Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness.

I believe Dr. Baker’s point is well taken. Yes, it is critically important to treat the symptoms of clinical depression. But we must stop and pause: is that enough? If it is, I can’t help but feel as though we have allowed ourselves to be victims on some level. Depression then has the danger of defining our identities as people. We are more than that. We must aspire to live a fuller life with times of joy, happiness and a sense of being alive. As Mark Twain once wrote, “Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

Tag: Happiness

Turning 50

Where does the Rat Race Lead Us To?

Managing Your Depressive Symptoms Is Not Enough

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