Anxiety and stress don’t go away just because you’re middle-aged. You still have medical, financial, and relationship worries. You may have more perspective now—you know things work out or they don’t.
You do what you can to prepare and manage. And when there’s nothing more to do you can meet your life with recklessness: letting go of calculating and controlling outcomes that can’t be calculated and controlled.
A biopsy, a tax audit, upcoming layoffs at your company: you can’t do much about how these turn out.
The reckless midlifer tells herself: “Life turns out the way it will, not the way I think it should. I bring responsibility to my life, and then I let go.”
In AA they tell you to “let go and let god.”
The philosophy of recklessness says “let go and let go (and let go and let go).”
Let go once. Feel the relief. Then let go again.
Today, I let go of my worries about what might happen. Then, when they arise again, I loosen my grip on them again. And again. And again.