A Midlife Pity Carnival
On June second, twenty eighteen, I laid myself down to go to sleep. As I laid there in the night, I struggled to find much-needed rest. A lifetime of thoughts hurried through my brain. A certain fear had taken over my head. It seemed to me that slowly but surely, I was losing my mind. I was becoming forgetful of small but important matters, like whose birthday was coming up next, or what family event was planned for the weekend. Like I said, small, but important.
On this night in question, chief among these thoughts was the fast approaching and very much anticipated fortieth birthday. In my mind I referred to this event as my halfway point to a full life. The way I saw it, at forty I still had another forty years more left in the bank of life.
As I thought about the state of my life, I could not help but to compare it against those hopes and dreams from my younger years. I wondered how I had managed to become such an ordinary man. What had happened to the old me? Where was the boundless energy, the restlessness, the always on the go, on-to-the-next-adventure version of myself.
In the place of that image now stood (or lay) this heap of tranquility and contentment. Somehow, I had been transformed into the spitting image of the middle of the road common American man. In that very dark hour, it felt like what had once been the vision of my life had slipped away only to be remembered as a footnote in the story of my current state of being. Being this ordinary type of a man had become such a comfortable coat to wear and in my time of self-lament, my twisted mind could not endure the weight of my good fortune. As I weighed my life’s ordinary routines and the simple luxuries which I was not prepared to do without, I could not escape the irony that my life as it was in that moment, was still the envy of many other people all around the world.
In the midst of my self-inflicted midlife crisis, my heart was being stripped of every trace of hope, joy and peace. Dread and sadness filled all of my imaginations and my life felt as if someone had carefully emptied my once boundless stores of energy and erased the quest for adventure that I used to have. The force now in charge of my thinking had locked-up all of the good and positive things from my in a small dark cupboard, pushed it all the way back into a dark corner of my mind, and thrown away the key.
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This was not my mind playing a simple trick on me. This was a mental trap. I had stepped onto a carelessly placed landmine somewhere in a hidden corner of my brain and now there was mayhem everywhere. This was my midlife crisis. The halfway point to what I considered a full life. My distress in the night was because a dark veil was making obscure the true brightness of the life that I actually have.
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I have always been a dreamer, but in this dark midnight, my dreams were slowly turning into a self-inflicted wound, an out of control, vicious, and self-centered pity carnival. A no fun circus, where the only amusement is a no-joy-allowed rollercoaster of despair, and the weather forecast promises to bring a one hundred percent chance of a tornado inside of a hurricane, inside of an earthquake, inside of a volcano, inside of a California wildfire, and that is just the appetizer. This was a carnival only suited for mad men and for those who wish to go mad. I did not want to be in this place even if it was only in my brain.
Big dreams were all that I had as a child. They drove my eagerness to leave the house and follow my brothers and sisters along the merry way to primary school. I had gone out into the world with a brand spanking new briefcase packed full of hopes and dreams for the bright future my parents wanted for me. Even bigger dreams are what brought me all the way from Zimbabwe to America. Decked in my favorite suit jacket, a gifted briefcase from my father in my left hand, and pockets full of dreams, I landed at JFK International Airport with all the aspirations of the generations that had gone before me and the promises of the ones yet to come.
Dreams are mostly all that I had when I asked Steph to be my wife. Someone to dream with, a ride-or-die partner for a storyline the likes of which would never be matched.
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In all fairness, all of my dreaming has come together to create my very comfortable life. However, and for some unknown reason, in that dark midnight hour back on June second twenty-eighteen, I looked around and the dreamer was gone. As I prayed myself to sleep, praying that this darkness would leave my mind, I asked the Lord to remove the very dark mask that was before my eyes. With all my strength, I fought against this cloak of darkness, pushing against this heavy cloud which had surrounded my mind and reached out towards the light that I knew was out there. I refused to close my eyes to this world until I had been raised from this death and set free from the belly of this darkness once and for all.
The truth of the matter is that my life is an amazing story through and through. While it might look ordinary on the outside, to be here today is nothing short of a miracle. Because of the courage of my great-grandmother Makara and the unconditional love of my parents, I have been infinitely blessed and still am wonderfully fortunate and grateful for the life that I have.
Throughout my whole life, I have developed this great tendency to underwhelm even my own self at a rate almost inversely proportional to the magnitude of my hopes, my dreams and my abilities. I often find myself in the company of some of the best and brightest of my countrymen and when I consider how far we all have come, and yet how much more I have been blessed, I know I have much to be thankful for. What is most amazing about my life is not that I followed through on all of my goals and aspirations to achieve much success. The remarkable story is that by the grace of God I have gained much despite my inability to execute my very own perfectly laid plan. This is what makes my life such a beautiful miracle.
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It is almost impossible to see and enjoy the beautiful things in life when your own brain keeps telling you that everything is working against what you had planned and hoped for. Sometimes, when we are young, we assume that simply by our effort and maybe with a little magic, everything will come together like clockwork if we stick to a plan. My heart as a young man was set on making my dreams come true and making my family’s dreams come true. I saw everything all so clearly in the eyes of my mind each time I laid myself to sleep on my single bed all those years at boarding school. I pictured the future I was going to have and reviewed every detail of it a thousand and one times in my mind during that long flight that brought me all the way from Harare to New York City in 1998.
But, when I tried to close my eyes on June second twenty eighteen, all that seemed so far away, and I was a different man now, a stranger even to myself. When, finally, the veil was lifted from my mind, I discovered that I have so much to be thankful for. A home with Steph our family of five children and a dog. Food on our table to fill our grateful bellies. Good health for all, if we disregard the occasional bruise and a broken bone now and again. Friends and family to share stories and to break bread with, many to help carry my burdens in this life as if they were their own. Self-pity carnivals are easy to throw but thank goodness they do not have to last long, not even for the night. When the sun comes up in the morning, God always makes my life more amazing with each beautiful ray of his ever-present sunshine that he shines on my soul.