The Messy Middle: Part Two - Mind

7 minute read

For anyone who missed my earlier piece, let me reintroduce the concept of the “Messy Middle.” I have a theory that like a lot of things in life – writing a novel, running a 10km race, steaming wallpaper – the middle is the hardest part, the part when the excitement of making a beginning has burnt out and the momentum we get from seeing something through has not yet kicked in. It’s the middle, there’s change happening and yes, it can get messy. Our first of three instalments on this topic focused on the body, today, it’s the turn of the mind.

As I start to write this piece, I’m thinking of the David Gray song, “My Oh My” a song from White Ladder, an album that was released when I was 24. Like most people I knew, I had a copy of this album – on CD, of course – and I listened to it over and over. I liked a lot of songs on the album, including “My Oh My” but it was only a decade or so later, hearing that song as if for the first time at a therapeutic retreat in Wicklow, that a line jumped out at me, that line about how he used to be so sure, so definite.

There’s something about the way he sings that lyric – “def-in-ite” he almost spits it out – that makes it pretty clear, that it’s a bad thing. At 24, I likely had a different take on the line, if I noticed it at all. At 24, I was pretty “def-in-ite” myself. I knew what I liked, what I didn’t, I was pretty certain on my values, the principles that guided my life. If a friend came to me and asked my advice on something I would be happy to give it, sure, as I was, in my own opinion, certain, that it was right. Looking back, I was big into “right”and “wrong”, “black” and “white” – on there being basically one right way to live and my job was not only to live it, but to do my best to make sure others were living that way too.

As I write all that out, I am conscious of the role of my Catholic upbringing in this view of the world, something I was blissfully unaware of having not darkened the doors of a church other than for weddings or Christmases since my late teens.

I had no idea that the things I’d learned as a child – at Mass, at home, at school, wherever – were buried deep inside me and that it was my right, even my responsibility to take these beliefs out and examine them in the light and decide, if in fact they were still true for me, if they were worth holding onto.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not talking about anything really heinous like, I don’t know, cannibalism, or the values represented by certain recent American president. I’m talking about more run-of-the-mill topics, like, say, therapy.

Therapy is something that for the most part, in my family, wasn’t really embraced or, believed in. Of course, it’s a generational thing, my beloved grandfather – who died when I was nine – apparently scoffed whenever it was brought up and, unsurprisingly, as a teen, I scoffed at it too. Later, as I got to know some people who had trained as therapists, my opinion softened a little: sure, therapy was fine, for people who needed it. I just didn’t happen to be one of those people. I was fine.

One of the first things I learned when I did venture into therapy in my 30s, sitting in matching IKEA easy chairs opposite a tall woman with long blonde hair and an interesting choice in shoes, was that “fine” was not, in fact, a feeling. Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional was what she was apt to trot out any time I slipped up and answered “fine” in response to her asking how I was. It made me laugh whenever she said that – thankfully, she had a great sense of humour which was one of the things that kept me coming back – and it has stayed with me all these years later. At that point in my life I considered myself to be someone who was pretty smart – I’d always done well at school, my career was going from strength to strength and as I already mentioned, people seemed to seek out my advice. And yet, I didn’t know, until that moment, that fine wasn’t a feeling. I didn’t know because I’d never thought about it, I’d never given much thought to feelings in general for that matter.

Another thing I learned, sitting in that IKEA chair, was that one of the defining features of my personality is my curiosity. Curiosity was not something that was fostered widely in the 80s in Ireland, at least in my experience, and like a muscle that I’d never used until those weekly sessions with my therapist, it had atrophied. But it didn’t take long for it to build back up, and I realised it wasn’t dead, only dormant. Curiosity, it turned out, was a very powerful thing, asking questions, being open to answers – especially answers about myself – led me to places I never expected. Curiosity, used in the right way, could be a substitute for courage.

The more I got to know my mind – my self – the more I wanted to know. There were things that I had taken for granted and things I had never understood about my reactions to things, why certain situations made me angry or upset or why I didn’t feel always the way I thought I “should”. For me, there was darkness there – traumas to be healed – but that’s the subject of another column. The point is that for the first time I was interested and paying attention, using the tool of therapy to not only uncover the kind of mind I had, but also to see if there were parts I might like to change.

Fourteen years on from that “fine” revelation I’ve tried all sorts of other tools as well. Yoga, mindfulness, meditation, group therapy, bodywork – there isn’t too much that I haven’t been open to trying at least once. My 20-something-year-old self – remember her, the “def-in-ite” one? – would be horrified to read this list, would be terrified that something must be terribly wrong and likely would hide that fear with being judgemental. But she didn’t realise any of that, that the judgementalism was a defence mechanism, or even that she was scared at all. The only thing she knew was that she was right.

It’s a cliché, of course, to say that the older I get the less I realise I know, but like a lot of clichés it has a basis in truth. Over the last decade, my ideas on many things have become less fixed. I’m more open, more accepting of there being many ways to view a situation and I’m beginning to understand too that my perspective – the initial way I see something – might be through the lens of my upbringing and not necessarily be reflective of who I am today.

I might need time to consider the various sides of an issue and find my true feelings. In my 30s and 40s I’ve learned to say basic phrases like “I don’t know” or “maybe you’re right” – things I would have been hard pushed to utter when I was younger. I’m still learning not to expect myself always to have the right answer or access to the right information and the expression “let me get back to you on that” has become invaluable.

So where is the messiness in all of this? Or is there any at all? For me, the messiness comes in when I find myself with people or in situations where I am not meeting someone else’s expectations. Maybe it’s an old friend who I’ve reconnected with who is looking for a partner in crime to gossip or bitch with – my 20s self was the queen of sarcastic one line put downs – or a work meeting where my default has always been to hand over my power to others and someone more senior than me expects that I will reinforce their not-so-great idea. In situations like these, it can feel suddenly, more comfortable to pick up those old behaviours, to be the person they expect me to be rather than the person who I’m still discovering I am. And when I default to being that younger self with the sarcastic one-line put down or enthusiastically nod along with a board member about a truly terrible idea I know is never going to work, then I forgive myself. I remind myself that I’m in the middle and it’s messy here.

My fear, writing this, is that to some readers, this might sound a bit too “out there” a bit too “New York” a bit too “self-indulgent” and maybe it will to some people. But whereas once that would have made me go back and delete that last paragraph, or at least tweak it, my 48-year-old mind recognises my need for approval and knows that it will pass, just like the thunderstorm that came out of nowhere right before I got to the library where I’m writing this piece. A thunderstorm that inadvertently led to me changing my plans and diverting to see a film – a film I’d never even heard of, even though it was the middle of the day, even though there was work to be done.

I never would have done that in my 20s, or my 30s or maybe even my early 40s but embracing spontaneity – like curiosity – is something I’m getting better at these days. I’m learning to listen to that nagging sense in my gut that tells me there is something here for me, something in this experience that I can do differently, be inspired by, learn from. An earlier version of me would have been so preoccupied with this deadline – and all the other work to be done – that she wouldn’t have stopped to watch the rain bouncing off the road at the intersection of 65th Street and Amsterdam, that she wouldn’t have noticed the cinema where the film was about to start. And I’m not making her wrong for that, I’m only grateful that today I do, that today I don’t let quite as many things pass me by.

The last time, writing about my body, I realised that what this “Messy Middle” really came down to for me was acceptance, not liking the changes necessarily, but accepting them while doing whatever I could to maintain what I wanted to have in my life. I realise, writing this instalment about my mid-life mind, that maybe it’s the earlier part of my life that was messier. That as my body gets stiffer, saggier, less responsive, my mind, in turn is more flexible, more supple, than it’s ever been, more willing, more open, even more curious. And surrounded as I am in my life by strong women who are older than me, I have the promise that as long as I stay committed to this path this will continue – that the older I get, the more deeply, the more authentically, I will get to know myself – my mind and my heart too.

And I don’t know about you, but if I have to experience a little messiness to get there, it sounds like it is more than worth it to me.