Let’s talk about halfway, or the midpoint. How do we know we’re there? In office hours, middays are in the name. The midpoint of a creative practice? Not so obvious. In life? Who the fu*k knows.
Horace, the Roman poet, had his definition,
“Once you've started, you're halfway there.”
Horace, Epistles
So let’s use that. Note the friction here lies in hitting the halfway point before we know we’ve officially started.
Times and places that feel halfway make obvious inflection points. Anniversaries. Birthdays. Especially the ones with big, round numbers, cakescape wildfires, and playlists built to honour existence.
Once the flames are gone, nostalgia might take that space – your dwindling youth, the burnt first half. Remember that you’re never too old to make a wish.
In the following days, perhaps you’ll start making big plans for the next half. Or maybe you just carry on ‘making progress’ on the cusp of something blind and existential. [I’ve written about peace as an art form in this space of ‘not knowing’ before.]
Hobbies (obsessions for healthy-ish minds) are your bridge to salvation. Solid tried and tested halfway distraction fodder. I ran 10 miles today just because my brain was on fire – standard midlife mitigation, as far as I can tell.
[As seen in the Olympic park – coincidentally about halfway through]
Halfway as a permanent state
Shout out to the Philosopher's guide to midlife crisis. It namechecks telic and atelic activities – Greek philosophical ideas that center on whether activities have an inherent endpoint. Telic activities can be finished, like closing a chapter on a hefty novel.
Atelic activities are ongoing, with no natural endpoint – running as a lifestyle, learning a martial art or a language, even creation-based gaming.
These are hobbies that nurture ongoing feelings of engagement, flow and groundedness. An entry-level counter to that cul-de-sac feeling thrown up by midpoint-malaise.
Note you only need to make a start on these things to begin with (thanks Horace), and being halfway through atelic activities is basically a permanent state. No need to throw in words like ‘mastery’ on day one, or ever. The world can cope without more masters, we’re fine.
What to do now
If starting in life brings you halfway, so it leaves you without guidance once you’re there – that sticky mid, a point that likely calls for (thankless) output, commitment, and ugh, consistency.
Theoretically you’ve got half as many options as you started. You’ve probably got more responsibilities. An identity you may or may not have built around your job or your hobbies. Throw in the fact that there’s No Bloody Time Ever.
Of course, you can let many of these things go. Cut ties. Say no. Stay in bed. But does that really bring you back to the start? And do you really want to go back? How many beginnings can one have?
As Alan Watts argues in The Wisdom of Insecurity, we don’t want to obliterate the movement. That’s the journey itself,
“...the fun of the journey is travel,”
and that the point of enjoying music isn’t to get to the end of the song. It’s all just making playlists to honor existance.
Staring out the window
A quiet window seat on a long train journey feels soothing. Old music videos of passing scenery. Just sitting back on the road, with somewhere vaguely in mind, that’s still just comfortably out of view.
Your own inflection points are coming. Once you’ve hit the mid, keep going, change direction, or circle back to find the closest version of a new beginning that feels right.
I sometimes wish I could land with clarity on whatever that exact journey (or destination) is for myself. Perhaps we all do.