No.
And good news for that. Thankfully, for as many reasons as there are for as many people exist on the planet, not everyone fears getting old, fears time, fears the future, or middle-age.In the midst of a major existential depression or crisis, you may experience an obsession about the upcoming future and future of yourself that fills you with fear, anxiety or some sort of deep-seated negativity. In that, you will likely do as I did and start looking around online to look for articles that others have written on fearing middle age or aging at all. The articles that others have written are extremely insightful, but may not help you in the midst of a crisis as many of them begin and recite the exact fears you are experiencing and make you feel as though they didn't really accomplish the natural fear. Their advice is neither totally relevant or irrelevant to what you are experiencing and are meant for more... "casual" types of blues about aging.
Instead, we need to try a different approach.
Consider This:
Look at the world going on around you. In all its good, bad, changing, building and decaying, if human beings were meant to be afraid of aging and time moving forward, or totally shut down at the approach of middle-age, would we have anything here at all?All of the systems you see around you and the history you can discover are not the products of pre-40-year-old persons. They are built, managed and maintained by a variety of ages, from some of the youngest of adults to the very oldest.
If time and age were really universal in disabling us, we wouldn't have any of this.
The Accomplishment:
While I do think almost all healthy human beings have pondered their existence and the nature of temporal reality, the experience of feeling that age or temporal limitations completely screw with the ability to just go about their daily business is thankfully not nearly as common. This helps the argument that what you are experiencing requires professional help, not something you should count on always having in life or that you can't count on others for help as needed.Why doesn't everyone fear time and aging? Again, it's as individual as the individuals themselves. It is accomplished with any combination of the following:
* Individual psychology.
* Individual life history and experiences.
* Spiritual belief reconciliation.
* Personal self-worth.
* Connection to goals and follow-through.
* Connection to community.
* Social and long-standing cultural attitudes on age and time.
* Physical and mental health.
* Perspective on the lifespan condition.
And others likely. What it really boils down to is they just don't feel like encroaching age is something that bothers them. It's a combination of "I've got all the tools and learning necessary to be ok with and enjoy this temporal incarnation" and "it really just isn't that bad at all."
Even some of the most sobering articles you can read on things like "midlife crisis" if you were to look them up state that those who experience it only do so for a few years - not a short time to be in existential crisis, but it does actually end while you still have a few more decades to look forward to.
Again, I would like to encourage you to rest your most fundamental fears on reincarnation, a form of fate and a form of God. You've already done this before, you WILL get to reunite with all that you've lost one way or another, and some kind of higher power is looking out for you. You don't need to believe that if you don't want to, but it's there if you need it.
The bottom line is this: It feels like you won't be ok, but you will be ok. Speak with your general doctor or a psychiatrist about being treated for depression, anxiety or related fears on aging and time moving forward.
Additionally:
“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”― Rumi
“I enjoy intuitive peace, and I play in bliss the cycle of reincarnation is expanding for me, and I am merged with the God, Lord and divine mother.”
― Shreeom Surye Shiva
“When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan I realized that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock…Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more.”[12]”
― Christopher S.M. Lyon, Holy Warrior in an Unholy Age: General George S. Patton and the Art of Sacred Violence in the Twentieth Century
“My sun sets to rise again.”
― Robert Browning
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
“When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together,but do so with all your heart.”
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“It’s [old age] not a surprise, we knew it was coming – make the most of it. So you may not be as fast on your feet, and the image in your mirror may be a little disappointing, but if you are still functioning and not in pain, gratitude should be the name of the game.”
― Betty White, If You Ask Me
“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost
“When Dr. Jung said we must be able to look forward in old age to the next day and to look forward to the great adventure that is ahead, he was making life’s “imperative to grow” personal. As long as we are alive, we must be able to dream of the future, of a better world or better ways of life. We are also invited by our greater Self to dream new dreams of creativity and fresh ways of expressing ourselves, as many great artists have into their nineties.”
― Bud Harris
“Every day, think as you wake up, ‘I am fortunate to be alive. I have a precious human life. I am not going to waste it,”
― Dalai Lama XIV
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