Pretend Play

I know what that mid-life crisis thing is all about. As I'm sitting here on one computer, my 17 month old daughter is clicking away at a keyboard to my right. She's sitting on my knee because she's too small to sit at the desk all by her lonesome. She's serious about this. She's having a great time. To me, she appears to be playing. Her job however, is to figure things out. This is the work of her world. It will be a long long time before she knows about letters and numbers. Years from then, she'll realize that those letters and numbers are represented on the keyboard that she is working at so diligently. Who am I to say that it won't make a difference to her down the road?
So what about the crisis? The crisis is what happens to people that never really get out of pretend play mode. They just go along doing what others expect, rather than living deliberately. They are mimicking others without really understanding what they are doing, just like my baby girl. At some point they wake up and realize that they've made many many choices that aren't easy to take back or rearrange. Others may have made choices deliberately, but the choices haven't brought them the "happiness" they expected. The crisis for them is the point where they "discover" that their own selfish "needs" aren't getting met, and may never be met in the way they had imagined. They feel stuck, prisoners in a cell of their own creation.
There have been movies made about this scenario, usually ridiculous comedies about some poor foolish man trying to recapture his youth. It plays out every day in the lives of far too many people, and everyone touched by it knows that there is no punchline. It's just a sad sad tragedy. I'd love to see another version of that movie made. Moments of crisis are stressful, but in reality, they are just moments of decision. As some point, caterpillars decide that they've gone as far as they can go as caterpillars. Do they decide to go back and try to recapture their larval stage? No. (Well, maybe some of them do, I haven't known any caterpillars personally.) Science classes have taught me that they wrap themselves up in a cocoon, their own self-imposed cell, and they completely transform. They become the thing that they were meant to be.
Human beings are meant to be so much more, and like the caterpillar we don't really "know" the destination until we arrive. I believe that we all feel the need to be better than we are, something more than we have already become. No Human Being flies higher than when they are freed from selfishness. I believe that the crisis can bring on a transformation of the soul. The decision can be positive and effect an end to seeking "the self". We find our best most beautiful selves when we start to focus on others, seeing to their happiness rather than concerning ourselves with our own. That is what being a mother is teaching me. Interestingly, it truly can only happen when you live life deliberately. Like my daughter and her keyboard, sometimes it takes a lot of chores before you begin to see the real possibilities and deeper meanings. Going through the motions of parenthood can only lead to a crisis. To find joy in it, you have to work in love rather than "chores". Stress and pain come along with transformation. After all, one could not possibly imagine that the creation of a completely new creature comes without cost. Round little fuzzy caterpillar. Majestically adorned floating butterfly. You run the numbers. You make the choice. I'd rather be a butterfly, personally. I want to fly.