Looking for Inspiration in Midlife

I am a man of many talents, a lot of which I learned and moderately honed as a younger man. As time goes on and the older I get, the harder it is to obtain that burning desire to try new things, or for that matter, feel passion for the old things. This dilemma goes deeper than just skills of the mundane like, playing a musical instrument, reading a good book, political debate, or the simple joy that I use to find in creating something with my own hands. This dilemma goes to the core of my relationships as well. I find most things to be boring and non-inspirational. It's as though I'm living day by day, just making the motions.

I think one of the hardest things about this insidious lack of motivation is the memory of what it was like to be truly inspired by something, music, religion, trying to make a political difference, love, anything in which I previously found a burning desire for or took pleasure in. I almost feel like I need to destroy my life in order to feel something, to make me feel alive once again. Feeling pain would prove I still have the capacity for some internal sensation. That is a deplorable thought because I have worked hard for the things that I have and I have people in my life that truly love me. What I do, I do for them, and they are the ones that keep me going. How would they look at me, what would they do, how would they get by? These are the questions I ask myself and the answer is to keep going for them. Is that true inspiration? I think not, that's just doing the right thing (for lack of a better explanation).

Someone once said that, you have to eat in order to think. I pine for the days when I struggled to eat because I didn't have the time to think and ponder my life (ignorance is bliss my friend). I was to busy just getting by. I have a feeling there are a lot of folks out there that have reached a point in their life similar to mine. What do they do, just live through it and be thankful they are alive, or do they come to another phase in life that they regain that lost muse? Do they take solace in religion, sex, drugs, impulse buying, gambling? How do they get by this and maintain all the things that seemed so important to them.

Let me just give you a clue (and I'm not bragging here) as to my position in life:

I'm thirty nine years old, lower middle class, I have a wife (even though we have had our ups and downs) that loves me, two teenage boys that are respectful (and about to be out of the nest), a house and some land in the country that is paid off, nice vehicles that are paid for in full, toys that are paid for, money in the bank, a job I hate but that is secure as long as I perform, I have gone back to school to prove that I can and to possibly further my career, and materially speaking I'm doing ok. If I stepped back and put myself in the shoes of the earlier me, I would say that I am doing better than I thought I ever would.

You might say, so what's the problem, your just an ungrateful person, your so lucky and don't even realize it. You'd probably be right, but it doesn't negate the fact that I feel empty inside. I look at people around me that are older (closer to the grave) and wonder why they have a smile on their faces. Are they putting on a front like me or are they content in their lives? We as a species are good at hiding emotions, putting on a façade of happiness. Is this the case for all humans, extreme apathy as they age? Am I unique in this? Is there true happiness, or is it all a lie?

In my Sociology class I read a section that talked about the phases of life. I found it very interesting. So interesting in fact I read it aloud to my wife, but when I came to the part about midlife she promptly told me to stop reading, she didn't want to hear it. In that (midlife) section it laid out what a person experiences and how they start to think. It said that, persons thought process changes from how far they have to go, to how long they have left. That got me thinking. It got me thinking, what have I accomplished, will I be remembered and if so what will I be remembered for, and what's the meaning of life itself. These things have been asked by men greater than I for a millennia. I wonder did any of them come up with an answer that would apply to me in my search for a passion and a muse in midlife?