A Bird-Brain and Emotional Instability

Ode to the Red Bird Who Slams Into our Window

1

Once our west windows stood tranquil, unruffled, and clear.

The living room within served as a place of rest,

Where I could hear

My mind, rejuvenate through every test.

It was a place to dream, to meet good cheer.

Times have changed. Our home’s no longer calm.

The peace has passed;

Turmoil has amassed.

My contemplative space has lost its inspirational balm.

2

One ordinary early morning,

Near the windows, in my comfy chair,

With some now unremembered thought just forming,

I was startled by events, then most rare.

A clumsy-sounding bang

From outside the windows rang.

The indoor-cat who at my feet lay sleeping on her back

Shot to a shelf, ready to attack.

Uncertain of what had just occurred,

The cat and I peered outside and saw a bird.

Still, the bird lay upon the ground,

An unmoving lump of red,

And I, I was sad to see such beauty downed;

The cardinal, stopped in flight, there was lying dead.

The cat, crouched above me on her perch,

So suddenly awake, prepared to lurch

Through the window glass,

Mostly to prove that she was fast.

I sighed and retreated toward my day.

Cat tensed. And resurrected bird flew away.

3

Oh, how I wish this story had a happy end,

But, alas, it does not—

I’m constantly reminded what unsettling onslaught it has brought.

The red bird, revived from death, flutters again.

He hates his glassy apparition. He’s obviously confused.

He slams himself into the pane. He must be feeling bruised.

His continued crashing leaves me unamused.

The place that once was my paradise of peace

Now reveals self-inflicted torture without cease.

My bedroom is above it, and every morn when cat and I awake,

We hear the bird-song and smack. How long will this dying take?

He castigates himself unyieldingly.

He serenades his own reflection unabashedly.

I keep hoping he will learn

And fly away free, never to return.

As he recurrently attempts to barrel through the glass,

A reality that can never be,

Musings and months pass.

He’s reminding me of me

As I soar toward visions that I almost see,

Obstinately proceeding, reverberating to the ground and so far re-arising

In spite of impossibilities.

                                            -Me

Recently one of my boys presented his brother with a birthday card that read, "Get Well . . . I hope you recover from your mental instability soon." Although the card had been carefully selected months in advance specifically because it was a crazy, misfit of a birthday wish, the words of the card, when read aloud on the actual birthday, made us all laugh a little too sincerely. The card was humorous because of the truth in it . . . for all of us at the moment. Our dear cardinal who has forcefully joined the daily interactions of this family of two young mildlifers and two youngish teenagers is one of many elements adding to our collective insanity these days.

And so runs our reality story as I see it this week. Sometimes one can find comfort in any kind of predictability, even the unsettling regularity of a bird living a long life of failed, loud, slow, and senseless suicide. Even so, I'll push on to something higher; surely there will be a better time soon. 

-a blog post by Tammy Fletcher Bergland  tbergland.blogspot.com

Time Will Tell

While I’ve enjoyed a semester of considering Gen X meeting midlife, I’m ready to move on, but a little closure is in order first.

I think that the psychology of midlife will remain much as it has been for other generations who have experienced midlife . . . at least for GenXers who slow down enough to realize when midlife is upon us. 

I don’t think we can deny that there is a certain psychology of “middleness” throughout human experience. The fact is, midlife IS in the middle of the lifespan. It is a time when one starts rubbing shoulders with death and illness more than during younger years. It is a time when one’s own body starts to feel some aging. It is a time when, at some point, each person will probably seriously consider his/her own mortality and try to figure out how the certainty of mortality will affect him/her in the here and now as well as in the years to come. For such reasons, midlife will surely continue to be a time of liminality in some manner, when people must come to terms with who they’ve been, embrace who they are now, and head toward a limited mortal life in the future. I think the time is ripe for new experiences of God and spiritual growth.

I also expect midlife in the coming 10 years or so to gain a flavor of GenX. First of all, we Gen Xers have seen Boomers and the Silent Generation go through midlife and are quite aware that life, for most people, can continue to be rich well past 60. We have, in fact, already incorporated the reality of a long life-span into our lives as can be seen by our later marriages and later child-bearing years. Many of us are not sandwiched between parents and teenagers as previous generations have been. More of us are single and without children. More of us have toddlers. Those of us who were born to Baby Boomers may not even expect to have to tend to our parents for many years to come. Some of us, even in midlife, have living grandparents while we are at the age to be grandparents ourselves. Many of us have confused family trees due to up to two previous family generations plus our own marriages that have dissolved in divorce; the sense of family and caring for the older generation is much more complicated than it has been for previous generations. Homosexual couples with and without children struggle with how the partner/children will financially survive should one of couple die because their family is not recognized as legitimate by laws as are heterosexual families. More children with autism have been born to us than to previous generations, and midlife parents whose children have special needs will certainly be concerned with long-term care for their children. As Gen X studies show, we have been cynical throughout life, and many of us will enter midlife with relatively few economic resources as compared to our parents when they were at midlife. 

As my questionnaires show, we will not be surprised if we find ourselves struggling to have basic needs met as older adults, and such a concern may impact our midlife in some way, whether making us more cynical or spurring us to work harder in an attempt to save more, I don’t know. While many of us expect rich midlife full of adventure offered by the small world we now live in, many of us expect that retirement age will be raised before we get there and that we will need to work longer into our old age than previous generations.

In addition, I am intrigued by Strauss and Howe’s theory of generational cycles. If their observations that large crises happen during the fourth generational turn in each four-generation cycle are accurate, then it is quite possible that the ebb and flow of life as we know it may substantially change around the time most Gen Xers have moved into midlife. According to observations and research by Struass and Howe, the fourth generations in each cycle (Gen X in the current cycle) in the past, have hit their peak of life as midlifers because they rise to the need to become crisis managers, guiding younger generations. 

I would be interested to know how the psychology of midlife played out in the lives of the previous fourth-generation groups in each cycle as identified by Strauss and Howe. I suspect, if the previous generations such as us were busy managing society-altering crises, they likely lacked the energy to invest in their own midlife crises. I imagine they simply survived day-by-day, trying to maneuver successfully through the bigger crisis at hand. Gen X, I think, would easily fall into such paths should massive crisis strike. As a generation, we are well educated. We have survived raising ourselves and have become problem-solvers who avoid idealism in lieu of the practical, and we have invested much effort in raising our children for whom we would do everything in our power to help if they were the young adults on the front lines of massive crisis. 

I don’t internalize doomsday predictions, and I certainly hope Strauss and Howe’s observations from the past don’t come to pass in this particular 4-generation cycle.

I’m not much of a prophet, I confess. I simply cannot see into the future, nor do I want to. So, time will tell what will come to be, and that's sufficient for me. I’m glad to finally be understanding my Gen X-ness, have enjoyed the journey so far, and am looking forward to more living . . . today, tomorrow, midlife, older adulthood, whatever tomorrows come. 

Wishing you all more tales to be told, whatever your generation or stage of life!

God’s blessings!


This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com

Cyclical Time: Is History Repeating Itself?

As I’ve looked at generations and generational mindsets, I’ve wanted to talk to more generations than are alive today to help me understand what experiences are human and what experiences are colored by how a generation fits into history.

William Strauss and Neil Howe have examined Anglo-American history through a generational lens all the way back to 1443. They believe they’ve discovered a pattern of generational personalities. They believe that four basic generational types exist throughout history and have cycled through in pretty much the same order over and over again based on the way adults raise children and interact with society and the way children respond to each kind of nurturing and the society around them. So, generations impact society, and society impacts generations as they influence new generations.

By Strauss’s and Howe’s definition of a four-generation cycle, as I’ve looked at Gen X and the three current living generations older than Gen X, I’ve been examining one cycle of four generations that exemplifies most of the other generational cycles throughout history. According to Strauss and Howe, almost seven consecutive times, Anglo-American history has cycled through high times, followed by times of awakening, followed by unraveling of society, culminating in crisis in repeating succession. (Note: the “almost” seven consecutive times is because the U.S. Civil War era was a little off of the usual order, skipping the unraveling and going straight into crisis.)

During crisis, Heroes come to the forefront to help society through massive crisis, that, when resolved, results in high times. Children born during the crisis are usually sheltered out of necessity due to the dangers around them, and they gain their generational identity as young adult Artists. Although Artists speak to the soul of society and have high expectations, they are not considered to be as strong as the generation of Heroes ahead of them nor as strong as the generation of children born after the Artists. During the high times of history, Heroes birth a large generation of Prophets during prosperous times. Prophets dream big dreams and challenge society to push through existing boundaries. As prosperous times give way to an unraveling society, an alienated generation of Nomads is born and much abandoned by society as children, growing up with low expectations. Widespread, massive societal crisis, according to Strauss and Howe, has almost always hit just about the time all the Nomadic generation reaches middle age. The Nomads--overlooked children who learned to manage alone--become the crisis managers, leading the younger and stronger generation who have been nurtured by society to become the Heroes through during much danger while highly protecting the youngest children, the new generation of Artists, as the generational cycle begins anew.

Through the words Strauss and Howe use to tell the generational story of history, Gen X is a Nomadic generation. In the book, The Fourth Turning, Strauss and Howe look at times of societal unraveling evolving into massive crisis and the generations who lived at such times back to 1433; that is, the book focuses on the fourth turn in four-stage generational/societal cycles. Based on what they see as historical precedent, Strauss and Howe expect the Silent Generation to fade away as Baby Boomers become the political leaders of an upcoming, large-scale crisis. They expect Gen Xers to pick up the reins of crisis management as Millenials hit young adulthood at a time when society needs them to become a strong generation of Heroes. They expect the children born during crisis to be highly sheltered and sensitive Artists.

Interesting view of history with an eerie perspective on today’s world . . . hmm? I was reading Strauss and Howe when the recent tsunami hit Japan, so I was especially fascinated by the photos coming out of the crisis, noticing the ages and roles people were playing in response to it.

Questions? Thoughts?

This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com

Middle Ground

Youth

Shrieking from deep within

Silent eyes dryly stare

Through benevolent adversaries

Who never quite understood

The impetus that is you.
                              -Me

-written by me as a 21-year-old high school teacher as I sat quietly with one of “my” adolescent rebels through an after-school detention

Undeniably, there is a psychology of humans in the middle that we have experienced or encountered in conversations or popular media: the middle child syndrome, feeling overlooked and slighted as the one who is neither the baby nor the oldest; the teenager in between childhood and adulthood, understanding more than a child while growing into an adult body, not ready for adult responsibility and not understanding that adult perspective has not yet arrived; the middle manager, discontent with incomplete authority and insufficient recognition or pay in spite of experience or education; the middle-aged adult with the potential of a midlife crisis, on the verge, perhaps of becoming wise, but struggling to come to terms with the of brevity of life, particularly one’s own life. 

We as humans seem to struggle a bit with not having quite arrived at wherever it is we think we’re headed or whatever it is we think we want. Being in transition puts us on edge, often pushing people away or pulling people too close, feeling smothered and lonely at the same time; who amongst us likes limbo or would claim that we want to feel stuck in the middle of . . . well, of anything? Often, nothing seems fair in the middle, especially where we're concerned as we view those who are the bookends to our middle.

While I, personally, am not anticipating midlife to throw any new psychological pitches at me, I think my own opinion on the matter of midlife is less reliable than research, observation, and the experience of many others. Times of limbo are notorious for distorting perspectives, so my anticipations of what life may soon hold for me developmentally are probably as off-base as a 13-year-old explaining how he/she will develop during the upcoming seven years.

I do think it is interesting that the majority of GenXers who completed questionnaires for me suspect that we will experience midlife differently than previous generations. While there is no research I am aware of to support that such a theory is playing out, I would not be surprised if each generation’s midlife years are colored uniquely by their generational personality and the societal forces around them; after all, such is the case of teenage years and early adult years. 

How much, though, is the basic psychology of midlife affected by generational experiences?

Before I’m ready to attempt to answer at that, I want to share an interesting theory on generational cycles, the idea that, throughout human history, a cycle of four generation types has recurred over and over again in the same pattern. It’s interesting stuff that I’ll save for another day.

Question: Do any of you LIKE being in the middle? Actually, I kind of do . . . many roles I've held over the years have required me to stand in the middle of different people/groups/opinions, to hear and attempt to understand all, to act as a kind of conduit. I haven't studied personality types. To those of you who have, is there a personality type that is particularly drawn to such in-between situations?

This blog post is part of a series of writing (April 3-May 14, 2011) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about Generation X facing midlife.   tbergland.blogspot.com