Nick Page, in his very good memoir on his mid-life crisis, The Dark Night of the Shed, explains why so many men feel empty around the halfway point.
“Inside every middle-aged man is a young man struggling to grow up….It is not so much the failure of their bodies; it is the failure of their gods. This is why feelings of disappointment and failure are so often associated with middle age. It’s not that we have actually failed — at least not in the ways that we think.
It is our gods that have failed us. We trusted them. We did as we were told. We made all the proper sacrifices. But they turned out to be the wrong gods.”
In that same vein, here’s something you can say to reorient yourself: “My god is in God.”
Just say that to yourself a few times today, and see how different it feels from simply saying, “I’m going to serve God.”
There’s a prioritization you get by saying “My god is in God” that you don’t get by just affirming, “I’m going to serve God.”
So can you genuinely say “My god is in God?” Does your life look like that? More importantly, do you even genuinely want to say that?
