The Flatness at 47

You kept waiting for the satisfaction to arrive. It didn’t.

There is a thread online where 376 men kept asking the same question. How do I keep going? 376 answers. Not one of them worked.

Many of those men thought there is something wrong with them. There isn’t. Others thought they were on the wrong track. That isn’t it either.

We’re cultured from age 5 or 6 that there is one finish line. Become competent. Become successful. Become the man who has it all handled. We’re told that’s the end of the road.

Nobody tells us there is more after this ceiling.

In contemporary Western culture, we are taught to do, to achieve, to accomplish. All the verbs. And in our mid to late 40s, the achievement game stops working. It stops giving us satisfaction. It makes us feel flat.

We try to achieve harder. We try to do more to beat it. It no longer works that way.

Here is what’s actually happening. The old you is dying. The old identity you’ve been doing life with is being replaced. And every decision you make from the old identity sinks you faster. It’s like standing on quicksand.

This is not a breakdown. This is the cocoon.

Every developmental tradition that ever looked at this passage called it the same thing. A darkness you have to go through before anything new forms. And you have to go through it alone.

The flatness is not your enemy. It’s your most honest signal.

The full video is linked above.