Questions of Life
If you’ve been around King’s for any length of time, you will know that I’ve found Gordon MacDonald’s writing about the underlying questions of life extremely helpful, both personally and pastorally. In his excellent book, A Resilient Life, he identifies some of the questions we ask ourselves (often subconsciously) as we age through each decade. I first came across his teaching at a training session I attended when I was still in my 40s. The questions he suggested as relevant for people my age resonated strongly with me and helped me process how I was feeling at that time. This gave me a level of self-awareness which helped me lead out of where I then was.
A few weeks ago I took some time to remind our staff team of the underlying questions that Gordon MacDonald so helpfully identifies. You may have heard these before, but here’s a quick summary of them:
Twenties – Who am I?
Thirties – How do I fit this all in?
Forties – There must be something more than this?
Fifties – Can I hold on?
Sixties – Am I redundant?
Seventies and Eighties – Was it all worth it?
My observation is that Covid has amplified everything; if there were issues in our lives before the pandemic, then it is highly likely the last two years have magnified those and possibly brought them to a crisis point. If you are in your thirties and juggling responsibilities of work and young children, you would probably have been wondering how you could fit everything in before Covid. Throw in months of working from home, home-schooling and social isolation, and those challenges will have been multiplied. If you are in your fifties, carrying numerous work responsibilities and wondering if you can keep going, the challenges of the last two years are likely to have increased the stress of that.
Self-awareness is critical. Being aware of the underlying questions of life and the emotions associated with those is the first step to understanding ourselves and initiating a plan to navigate the different seasons of life.
