The Passage of Time

How’s your journey to midlife – I’m here now – not sure how I arrived, it only feels like 5 minutes ago I was working my Saturday job at Woolworths, doing my A levels and falling in love for the first time! Now I’m here reflecting on this journey and realising this passage of time is such that we all journey through life approaching destinations or stations we didn’t fully appreciate in our youth.

When that moment arrives (for those of us aged now between 30-50) it's almost imperceptible, there can be a realisation that we are no longer the young observing the old. We have become the middle generation, standing between aging parents and sometimes adult children, carrying responsibilities in both directions while still attempting to maintain our own lives, work, identities and futures, maybe even planning our own retirements.

The phrase ‘sandwich generation’ is often used to describe this position - to care for aging parents while supporting children entering adulthood is to live inside multiple versions of time simultaneously. One generation is slowing down - maybe so much so that you are having to navigate the ever complex care system for your parent, whilst the younger generation is expanding, enjoying all life has to offer them. And somewhere in between, there is the sandwich generation - us - having to look both ways! The question is, how to be present for all these needs, as well as acknowledging our own pathway as we begin to feel the unsettling movement of our own lives passing too.

I have witnessed that the biggest impact for my clients in the therapy room is not simply that they notice parents age - it is that they notice them become vulnerable. The people that may have once appeared immovable, who oriented the world for them, begin slowly to need help themselves. There may be a noticing of repetitions in conversation, confusion over technology, fatigue, frailty, new medical appointments – parents seem to become more uncertain, reflective, or needing. But the emotional dissonance is profound because they remain psychologically the parent, even while becoming increasingly dependent. No one really prepares us for the strange sorrow of role reversal.

Whilst at the same time midlifers (those with children) witness the younger generation begin to move toward independence. They leave home, or begin to build identities beyond their parents. The intensity of being needed shifts shape. The years of practical parenting gradually give way to this witnessing rather than responsibility and this can be experienced as another loss that we rarely acknowledge.

Midlife therefore becomes full with contradictions:

• gratitude and grief

• competence and exhaustion

• authority and invisibility

• love and anticipatory loss.

And all the while, many of us remain embedded in working life - navigating careers that once defined us but may now feel increasingly provisional. Retirement appears on the horizon for us midlifers, not simply as a sense of freedom from the commitment of our working lives, but as another transition in identity - crossing from one shore to another. This is perhaps why this passage of time can feel emotionally complex, confusing and dysregulating, rather than merely sad. A lot of these complex feelings can end up being expressed as anger or irritation but if we scratch beneath the surface we may find fear.

Famous pyschotherapist Carl Jung understood midlife as a profound psychological turning point. He wrote,

In our youth we can be consumed with acquisition: building identity, career, family, status, momentum. But the second half of life asks different questions altogether. This comes into the therapy room as reflections such as, what matters now? The expansive period of youth gives way to greater reflection and integration in midlife. There can be a resistance to this as many people encounter this shift reluctantly – change is hard. Especially when we now live in a culture that worships youth with such intensity that aging can feel like a kind of disappearance. Yet Jung suggests something else entirely - that later life may hold its own wisdom precisely because it forces us into deeper relationship with impermanence.

The Stoic Philosopher Marcus Aurelius returned constantly to this theme:

For the Stoics, peace was found not in resisting transience but in accepting that change is the very fabric of existence. Although this sounds straightforward philosophically, it is much harder emotionally, as to watch those we love age, is to test our attachment. We can be distressed not merely because time passes, but because we see our loved ones pass through time – the loved ones whom we formed attachments to – whether those be secure, anxious, ambivalent or avoidant – these attachments shaped us – their parenting styles helped form us, their gestures are woven into our earliest memories, whose existence once seemed permanent, because as children we didn't yet understand the impermanence of life.

Perhaps this is why grief often begins long before death itself - anticipatory grief. There is a quieter grief in witnessing this aging process - their loss of confidence, slowing step, confusion, emptying of the family house, the awareness that the social rituals of gatherings are also changing shape. But there is also an extraordinary tenderness in this phase of life where we get the opportunity to repay the care we may have, or not have received, with our own ability to care in return. We can recognise our parents not as archetypes but as vulnerable human beings, whilst also witnessing our own growing or adult children emerging fully into themselves.

Psychotherapist and author Dr Sharon Blackie often explores the psychological and mythic dimensions of aging in her work, especially the necessity of embracing later life not as an irrelevance but transformation. In her book 'Hagitude' she writes that for women particularly,

Dr Blackie’s work resists the idea that aging is merely decline; instead, she frames it as a return to authenticity, depth and untamed truth. This untamed truth, authenticity and depth in the ‘Sandwich Generation’ can bring perspective as by midlife, many illusions begin to fall away. There becomes an understanding, perhaps for the first time, that time is not just a linear theoretical concept – it is embodied.

I felt this embodiment the first time I viewed JMW Turner’s painting ‘The Fighting Temeraire’. A print of this was hanging in the home of an elderly relative of mine - I always noticed it. It draws you in, the painting says so much. This relative is now himself in a care home and I was fortunate that he passed this print to me - I treasure it. It tells a story and in my work I see how stories can help us to express the feelings that may be so hard to share.

Have you seen it? How do you feel when you look at this painting?

I invite you to take a moment to run your eyes over the painting. What do you notice? What are your eyes drawn to? What comes up for you? What element is prominent for you, the rising moon, the setting sun, the sea? What intrigues you? What do you want to avoid in the image?

Currently on display at The National Gallery, they state,

Turner was 64 years old when he painted this. His career started at 15 years old when he exhibited at the Royal Academy – what an exceptional life he led. This painting of the retired ship - pale yellow in colour and ghost like, being towed by the modern steam powered tug boat all on the left hand side of the painting. On the right side is the prominent sun setting, casting a wonderful light over the River Thames. I once attended a lecture on Turner at Petworth where the curator talked about Turner’s relationship with the sun in his art and how he saw this as a representation of the Divine/Source/God, famously declaring on his deathbed that "The Sun is God". The elements of this painting could then represent the passing of time as this ship is given passage via the steam tug to its graveyard.

Turner chose to paint HMS Temaire as it was known as a hero ship during the battle of Trafalgar – it was famous for saving Nelson aboard his ship HMS Victory – it had also captured enemy ships – but after the Battle of Trafalgar it never fought again and remained at Sheerness, Kent, as a supply ship. It was said that it took approx. 5000 oak trees to build this ship, so it was not going to be just disregarded. Eventually the Royal Navy sold it for scrap.

Exploring the themes in the painting can invite us to feel into the emotions it evokes in us. The rising moon on the left, the setting sun on the right, the retired ship being towed to its final dock. Smoke from the young steam tug boat is covering the Temeraire's jackstaff, which is a small, vertical pole located on the bow (front) of a ship, typically used to fly a flag known as a 'jack'. Introduced in the 18th century, it is essential for displaying national or specialised flags, particularly when the vessel is at anchor or in port. Notice the white flag on the top of the mast of the tug boat – this was used to show that a ship was in commercial hands - the Temeraire now stripped of its previous naval flag and identity – the fluttering white flag of surrender as the tug towed the ship to its impending ending. Perhaps this is why the painting strikes so many people more deeply in midlife than in youth. We begin to recognise ourselves within it.

Turner is the master of painting a sunset in my humble opinion - look at the sunset in this painting - it feels is not only mournful - it is radiant! The beauty of the scene comes precisely from its transience - I feel the light here really matters because it is fading. Maybe this is what maturity finally teaches us - that love and loss are not opposites, they are intertwined. To witness aging is painful because attachment is love. To grieve the passing of generations is also to recognise how fortunate we are to have travelled alongside one another at all. Maybe then the true sorrow of time passing is inseparable from gratitude?

Like Turner’s great ship, none of us escapes the slow tow toward the horizon! Each generation moves forward, places are exchanged, identities shift, seasons turn. But there may still be dignity in the passage and even beauty in this changing light. I wonder then if we take notice of this journey we may discover that what remains at the end is not despair at impermanence, but gratitude at having shared the voyage.

If you're not at the Midlife yet or have passed this point, I wave to you with gratitude for this journey from one passing ship to another!

References:

• Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations. Translated by Gregory Hays. Modern Library, 2002.

• Blackie, Sharon. Hagitude. September Publishing, 2019.

• Jung, C. G. Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Routledge Classics, 2001.

• Turner, J. M. W. (1839). The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838. National Gallery, London.