The Midlife Reset
In 1843 Danish philisopher Søren Kierkegaard made the keen observation that while life must be lived by moving forward, we only truly understand our choices when we reflect on the outcomes of those choices.
By midlife, those of us who chose the path of constant curiosity have expanded our worldview so far that a void begins to emerge. It is a quiet realisation that hangs in the morning air, a lingering suspicion that there must be something more to existence than the hollow social scorecards of society.
Having reached this junction in life, at age 43, I withdrew from the world to contemplate that grand old question: Exactly what is the meaning of life? If society can't provide an answer, then surely it must be something deeper, something more primal. As the layers of social conditioning fell away, a door opened, and the answer became clear to me. It was not the technological marvels of the future that will unlock some transformative joy of being, but the deep roots of the genetic and bioregional paths blazed by our forefathers, a foundation of strength built one generation at a time, always moving towards the one true purpose, the one true goal - Evolution.
From Post-Traumatic Stress to Post-Traumatic Growth
Carl Jung once posited that the psyche possesses an inherent, almost violent drive toward wholeness, asserting that "there is no coming to consciousness without pain." He understood that for the advanced intelligence of the psyche, a catastrophic breakdown of the old self is often the prerequisite for the emergence of the new.
But surely PTSD is for war veterans, not pencil pushers who have never seen the wrong end of a rifle. Trauma, especially epigenetic trauma passed on by our parents, comes in many forms. It can sit dormant until a social pattern emerges that prompts the subconscious to re-pattern the nervous system to trigger a call to safety - anxiety. Even before we are born, our lives have been shaped by those of our parents, from the nutrition they consumed, the events of their childhood, and the choices they made as young adults.
And so, with this invisible, silent, safety net, we journeyed the paths of our own lives, collecting our own experiences, for better or for worse. It appears in many forms, from the food we are required to eat due to ethnic, regional, or dogmatic religious requirements, to our exposure to the unseen trauma that shapes and drives the actions of each and every soul we encounter along the way.
In hindsight, those who have walked through the fire are forever grateful for the unique perspective they now possess. A subconscious lighthouse now beams forth its guiding light, night and day, season by season, never allowing us to stray too close to the rocky path that we endured through our more adventurous youth. With the beacons lit, Evolution whispers to us that there is a better way.
Peak Performance and Evolution
Nobel Prize-winning biologist Albert Szent-Györgyi posed the following in his 1960 book Introduction to a Submolecular Biology - "The mystery is not that we develop, but that once having developed, we ever stop; and having stopped, why we cannot begin again."
While our form and function are largely governed by our genetics, it is our bioregional diet that drives these morphogenic and epigenetic outcomes. And yet, with all of our technological advancements and domination of the food chain, Homo sapiens have failed to master the basics of good physical health and wellbeing.
How is it that from a similar starting point so few can attain a flow state, master a skill to the point of dominating all others, or unlock dormant savant capabilities. Modern society calls them the "gifted ones". Ancient Greece referred to them in terms such as Charisma (Grace/Favor), Dōron (Granted Skill), Techne (Artistic Gift), or Menos (Battle-Fury), a talent or quality bestowed upon a person by the gods. To the Greek mind, any human who performed a task with a level of perfection that seemed "more than human" was operating under a state of grace. Whether you were leading an army or tracking a boar in the mountains, your excellence was proof that a god was "breathing" into you.
Modern scientific discourse has since revealed to us the true nature of how the aggregate cellular intelligence of our bodies, culminating in the mind, enables these states of evolutionary perfection. In a Permanent Metabolic Flow State (PMFS), the body achieves sustained morphostasis. Savant skills, - inate/biological, genetic disposition, or rapid dynamic learning - sit gift-wrapped within each of us, waiting for the required metabolic conditions to emerge and flow through us.
We must all walk our own unique evolutionary path, but when lost in the jungle, a guide who has already picked the lock can pave the way for even the most challenging of adventures.