In my twenties, I chased mastery. Coding languages, freelance contracts, deadlines measured in hours, success measured in clients. For fifteen years, I ran hard in that direction—until I noticed I wasn’t running toward anything. I was only running.
On paper, I was fine. Productive. Reliable. Curious, even. But inside, something was yawning open. A silence not of peace, but of absence.
It wasn’t depression. It was a quiet exile from meaning. I’d lost track of why I was doing what I was doing. I’d become an expert at everything except my own life.
Midlife as Curriculum
In Jungian thought, the first half of life is about building the ego—establishing identity, vocation, structure. We pour our energy into proving we are someone. But somewhere in the middle—often right on schedule, around 40—something shifts.
The outer syllabus ends. The inner curriculum begins.
No one announces it. There is no orientation day. But slowly, or all at once, you find that old goals no longer motivate. Known roles no longer fit. The ladder feels strangely detached from the building.
Midlife isn’t a crisis. It’s a summons.
It doesn’t ask: “What have you achieved?”
It whispers: “Who are you now that you’ve achieved it?”
Endurance as Spiritual Practice
I returned to running during this inner unraveling. Not for speed, not for data. Just to feel my feet on the ground, to keep moving when I didn’t have answers.
Endurance is deeply Jungian. You go out with a plan—split times, pacing—but what actually matters is what emerges between the metrics: the rhythm of breath, an irrational joy in mile six, the shadow voice at mile ten that says “quit,” and the deeper voice that answers, “not yet.”
Something happens to the psyche when you push your body past familiarity but not past kindness. You begin to hear the soul more clearly. You make space for it to speak.
The Liberal Arts for the Soul
There’s a phrase that’s been following me lately: liberal arts for the soul. The idea that we can—and must—study ourselves with the same rigor we studied algebra or grammar. Not for the sake of utility, but for the sake of wholeness and integration.
Myths become textbooks. Dreams become case studies. Movement becomes meditation. The world—inner and outer—becomes both teacher and textbook.
A New Kind of Classroom
This essay is a beginning. Not a teaching, but a sharing. A gesture toward the kind of space I longed for when the old map ended.
I’m not here to coach you. I’m not offering tips or hacks or answers. I am inviting you into a new kind of seminar—one where your questions matter more than your credentials, and where your soul is the most important syllabus you’ll ever read.
The semester has already started. You didn’t miss it. You’re right on time.
So take a deep breath and let’s dive in.