I came across a short meditation last week in 24 Hours a Day—a book that’s been a touchstone for me since my 30’s. It begins:
“Most of us have had to live through the dark time of our lives… when we were full of struggle and care, worry and remorse, when we felt deeply the tragedy of life.”
If midlife is anything, it’s a time when many of us become intimately familiar with those dark stretches.
It’s a season that’s often longer than we expect and more complicated than we admit.
There are years when the outside looks solid but the inside is fraying.
Years when you feel split between the life others see and the one you hide.
Years marked by private guilt, recurring patterns, or a slow drift from who you meant to be.
Midlife is where the gap between who we appear to be and who we actually are becomes harder to ignore. |
Most people never talk about those years; not to their friends, not to their partner, sometimes not even to themselves.
And often, their true weight doesn’t reveal itself until much later.
Until you finally look back and see the ripples that were invisible while you were just trying to get through it.
And no one captured that tension better than Bruce Springsteen.
In “Darkness on the Edge of Town”, he writes:
“Everybody’s got a secret… something they just can’t face. Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it. They carry it with them every step that they take. Until someday they either cut it loose or let it drag them down into the darkness on the edge of town.”
We all carry something. Eventually, we decide whether it weighs us down or becomes the work that frees us. |
In my twenties, I didn’t get it. I was more interested in shouting the chorus to “Badlands.”
In midlife, those words finally made sense. I heard them with ears that understood what it meant to choose between cutting something loose or letting it drag you down.
Because the longer I carried what I wouldn’t name, the heavier it became—even as the world expected me to be “fine,” stable, strong, past the chaos.
But midlife has a way of revealing a different truth:
Midlife isn’t the stage where we’re supposed to have everything figured out.
It’s the stage where the real figuring out finally begins.
It’s the threshold where old strategies stop working, our stories begin to unravel, and any gaps between our public life and private truth become too wide to ignore.
Later in the lyrics, Springsteen wrote about being “on that hill ’cause I can’t stop… on that hill with everything I got.”
For many of us, that hill becomes the moment we decide to stop hiding from ourselves.
It’s the moment the work becomes real.
And that’s where the possibility of a new dawn begins.
Because you can’t walk into a new chapter while dragging your old story.
Naming it—even to yourself—is the first light.
Your turn. Journal Prompt |
Take five quiet minutes to write whatever comes.
Let the page hold what you’ve been carrying.
- What part of your past still feels like “night”—and what would it mean to stop wrestling with it?
- What have your hardest years prepared you for that an easier path never could?
- What does “this day is mine” look like in practical terms—emotionally, professionally, spiritually?
Midlife doesn’t have to be a solo sport. If you’re sorting through a hidden chapter or cresting your own hill, hit reply or or schedule a call.
And in the words of the meditation that started all this: “The night of the past is gone. This day is ours.” —Mark
Mark Wigginton, MS, Certified Professional Coach
Personal Coach | Midlife Guide | Next Chapter Navigator
📬 MarkW@FocusingOnResults.com
🌐 www.focusingonresults.com
🔗 Connect with me on LinkedIn
P.S. If this message resonated with you, it might speak to someone else too. Forward it to a friend who’s ready for their next chapter—you never know what kind of shift a few words of encouragement can spark.
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