Men at midlife

Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.
— Donald Justice


The opening lines of this Donald Justice poem have always struck me as profound and often true. It certainly applies to more than just men, and you don't need to be 40.

We are born into a mansion of a hundred rooms, only to close doors one by one until we find ourselves living in a studio apartment at the age of 40, 50, or 60, wondering how things got so cramped.

The work in the "second half of life" is rediscovering these closed rooms and reclaiming their contents as our birthright. I imagine each closed door has a word or phrase written above it.

Some of my doors are labeled Vulnerability, Real men don't..., and Play.

The older I get, the more curious I become about what I left there.