The Middle Passage

At some point, the deal breaks.

Unknowingly we signed an agreement growing up: play by the rules, keep our heads down, mean well and the universe will hand over its fair share.

Psychologist James Hollis calls this the “tacit contract with the universe.” It describes the way in which we expect (or perhaps hope) that our good behaviour will guarantee a secure, predictable outcome, adopting personas to survive and meet societal expectations–dampening parts of our character and intensifying others in an effort to tick the right boxes.

And then the floor gives way.

Effort goes in and the reward never arrives. The self we constructed to please others fails to sustain ourselves, leaving a sense of existential dread. This rupture, familiar to many, is what Hollis refers to as The Middle Passage, understood widely as a midlife crisis. 

General consensus is that this is a temporary panic: a moment of madness where we buy a motorbike or take a sabbatical to Thailand before regaining our senses. Instead, Hollis suggests this is an unavoidable transition from the somewhat naive, rule-following existence into true adulthood.

The realisation that the world does not operate on a reward system for good behaviour is destabilising and requires introspection, resolve and agency to overcome without resignation.

By extension this is a continuation of stoic thought that’s seeped into mainstream betterment culture in recent years–an extrapolation of the alpha sentiment that “nobody is coming to save you” or, less controversially and more beautifully, Sartre’s line that we, as humans, are “condemned to be free.”