Finding meaning after 50

Because I have worked for years in a helping profession I love, I thought I was well insulated against the angst of an emptying nest. I assumed the vacuum experienced by many mothers whose children grow up would be amply filled by work and projects when my own children left home. I was wrong.

As my children left and my roles shifted, I had plenty to do all right. But I still felt like a sailor with no wind, no map and no destination. I tried to tackle these doldrums of meaninglessness the way I’ve tackled them in the past: by paddling harder. I pursued goals, experimented with new identities and initiated projects consistent with my deepest values. I volunteered with nonprofits, kept a gratitude journal, delighted in grandchildren, invested in friendships and read books on spirituality in the second half of life. Ironically, I even co-authored a national best-seller on finding meaning at work.

As helpful and constructive as all these activities have been in getting me moving again, I have still felt like I was missing something — an identity, a role, a purpose — some essential perspective to light up the stars overhead for my journey.

It is rumored that someone once asked the famous psychologist Carl Jung how many of his patients had solved their problems. The great man considered the question for a few moments and then replied, “None.” To the confused inquirer he then added, “However, some people have managed to transcend them.” Another way of saying this is that our task is not always to find an answer but to find a better question.

I began to wonder what it might entail to transcend my current quest for meaning. Maybe the solution was not entirely to be found in goals or roles or taking the bull by the horns — techniques that had been successful for me in the past. Maybe the solution was not even to find a solution. Maybe I needed a whole new question — one I could not yet imagine.

During this crisis decade, my mother developed Alzheimer’s disease. In the past 10 years she has lost her ability to set goals, plan or even follow simple directions. The roles that organized her life in the past and the aspirations that might take her into the future no longer register. Plaque and tangles in her brain steal her memories, jumble her sentences, compromise her self-control and short-circuit her moods. It has been extremely difficult for me — so dependent for my sense of meaning on my ability to think, create and control my destiny — to understand the point of living like this.