Call it midlife crisis, depression, alienation, the dark night of the soul, the opening of a new path. But honor it. Listen. Respond. In the beginning all you can know is that the old pillars of your identity no longer support the weight of your being. It is time to leave behind the achievements and virtues you have laboriously accumulated during the first part of your life. Goodbye to the stereotyped roles—of rich man, poor man, doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief—of warrior and conquistador.
The first rites of passage are imposed on a boy by society, separating him from the warm, encompassing, and limiting perspective of mother and family and thrusting him into the world of adult responsibility. But rites of initiation into extraordinary manhood must be self-administered. The crisis in a man's life comes when he is separated, or suddenly perceives himself as separated, from the encompassing but limiting perspective of the normal world of adulthood. Then, he must enter into a deeper relationship with himself, become an authority in the nuances of his own experience, define manhood for himself. Our boyhood initiation consisted primarily of internalizing the answers that were given us by adult authorities. In Sunday school, civics class, the workplace, the army, we memorized the myths and meanings before we had the experience of life. We pledged allegiance to the official conclusions. The rite that initiates us into extraordinary manhood begins when we start to live with a new and disturbing set of questions.
...a man who is a pilgrim, who has lost his way, asks the perennial, mythic questions...
To be on a quest is nothing more or less than to become an asker of questions. In the Grail legend, the classical tale of male heroism, we are told that when the Knights of the Round Table set out on their quest, each one entered the forest at the place it was darkest and forged a path where none had been before. The inner, psychological meaning of this myth is that full manhood is to be found only when we commit ourselves to a life of questioning.
The mood of our contemporary quest is reflected in Rilke's advice to a young man: "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers...Live the questions."