This Isn't The Sandwich I Ordered

In this episode, Wendell takes a break from his crazy routine to discuss his experience of being in the "sandwich era" that is middle age, and what it's like to try to live and thrive while dealing with the competing demands of life at 50. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Today I will be talking about sandwiches. But not the type of sandwiches that uh you would normally think of when you hear that word. Uh, but give me a minute and I will explain. So I have been working on this episode for the past several weeks, and I'll be honest with you that um it just has not been happening. I genuinely feel like I have not had any significant period of time where I've had the intersection of just a free period to sit and work on this and the creative energy to actually get it done. I have a full draft of another episode that was supposed to be this one, plus multiple other topics that I have fleshed out in various forms, as well as several interviews lined up, but man, life has been happening and in rapid succession too, and and these things have been getting in the way of me putting my time and energy into getting this episode done. And as someone who has set a target of publishing two episodes of this podcast a month, the additional stress of not actually doing the uh podcast has only made matters worse. So today, as I was reworking and retooling the narrative wrapping to put around the draft of of the aforementioned episode that this was supposed to be, I started thinking about the fact that as a middle-aged man, this current situation that I'm in and the difficulty that I am having in getting this episode out into the world is very indicative of the challenges of where I am currently in my life. Uh at fifty years old I am considered squarely in the middle aged category. Um and uh you know I did some research on this and uh the middle age age range falls between forty and sixty-five, and it is often referred to as the sandwich generation era because we, the individuals in this demographic band, are often faced with not only our own lives, but we are faced with bringing kids along and helping raise them. And then on top of that, we have to deal with the fact that the umbrella or the top layer of bread, I guess, uh that has always been there and uh has protected us seems to be receding and eroding as our parents and our our older loved ones and their families begin to enter and finish out their twilight years on this earth. And then when you throw in the financial burdens of our children getting older and the demands of of where we often are in our careers at this time, it really does start to feel like one, we are in uh uh a not so great sandwich, right? But it also feels like we are living for everyone else and not for ourselves. I mean, in my teens and early twenties and well into my thirties, life was all about me, and and if I'm being honest, even when I had uh you know long-term relationships and and strong familial relationships, life ultimately revolved around my personal worldview, and that was facilitated by a construct of support that had been there since the day that I was born and it evolved over time as I grew, right? But it still allowed me to make mistakes, to try things, to fail, to succeed, to have triumphs, and and so much more. But that subtly started to shift once I had a kid of my own. Because once you have a kid, you can start off being uh self-centered, but you quickly realize that child rearing requires a tremendous amount of personal sacrifice, and on top of that, becoming a parent compromises you emotionally. You know, I I I jokingly tell people that having a kid is like taking your heart out of your chest and literally putting it on your sleeve or even on top of your shoe and it just gets hit and knocked and trampled on all the time. And you know, um as you have kids and you get older, things just start changing. You you start seeing the world differently. I mean, you know, certain themes in movies and popular fiction that I once loved seem trite and gratuitous, and I often find myself getting emotional about things that would have made the 30-something year old version of me laugh out loud. Now, don't get me wrong, I mean I've always wanted to be a dad, and I truly love every second of fatherhood, even on the tough days. But the thing about parenting is that the stakes always feel really high, right? So tough days are often magnified because what I have figured out, and this is no mystery, this is just one of those things that you kind of get into as you get older and you start having a family. But I know now that my decisions impact not only me and my spouse, but they impact a child who, for all intents and purposes, depends on me as part of that upper layer of bread, right? That that construct that I took for granted and I relied on my entire life. And it is a responsibility that I take very seriously. And I enjoy it and I love it, but it has completely shifted my worldview as someone who in particular values education uh and trying to provide opportunities for others. So this worldview, of course, has bled over into my work, and that's what ultimately led me to working at an educational institution. I worked uh at LSU Trafeport for four years, and now it has led me to being the executive director of Robinson Film Center, a nonprofit art house theater whose mission is to educate, enrich, and entertain the region through the medium of film. So now I'm no longer playing with house money and and the wins and losses impact my entire familial unit. You know, I can't even engage in the mildly self-destructive behaviors that are acceptable among youth because I spend a significant amount of time worrying about how what I do, even when I'm on my own, would impact those that I love and those who love me and depend on me. And listen, all of these things are common across cultures. This is not something that is new or revolutionary. Um but what is interesting is that in in doing my research for this episode I found out that there is disproportionately less research done on middle aged people and how the changing dynamics of entering and living through this period impact us physically, emotionally, psychologically, and financially. On a surface level, this lack of research shows up in, you know, basic things like how we identify archaic ideas like the midlife crisis, you know, that stereotype of of a guy uh buying a a red sports car and you know, dating somebody uh half his age, right? But uh it it also shows in in deeper and more dangerous ways in, you know, for example, in the examination of how taking care of an aging loved one can impact you um psychologically and emotionally, or or or even the dearth of research that has been done about women entering their menopausal years, right? It is n it's clear that it's not something that researchers and doctors have spent a lot of time thinking about, much less talking about. And again, this is not me coming here to rant about the shortcomings of uh medicine, but you know, as someone who's married to uh a a middle-aged woman, I see it and I see it with my my female family members and my female colleagues, and I hope that more people continue to take this seriously and learn to categorize and understand these things so that we can address them in a healthier way and we can talk about them uh openly and productively so that people don't have to suffer in silence because it's a thing that we have to do to bring it out into the light before we can really address it in a meaningful way. And again, this isn't about just being a foreigner because as a foreigner um who is living thousands and thousands of miles away from where I grew up, I will tell you that some of these pressures of being middle-aged uh seem slightly amplified, right? Uh particularly when it comes to family. I often struggle with the fact that my daughter is not growing up close to many of her cousins and uncles and aunts. I struggle with the fact that my support system, the people who that that raised me, they are entering their twilight years, but they are doing so uh far away, and I I often don't see this gradual progression. What I see is that, you know, if I'm away from home for two years, someone looks two years older than the last time that I saw them, and it is a very stark contrast that you don't often see on uh FaceTime calls or in photos and stuff like that. I'm also keenly aware that I don't have the the friends that I grew up with close by to to age or enter middle age and go through middle age with at the same time. Uh these are people who were literally grouped with me from a very young age because we were all placed in the same school together as kids, and we are all on the same path. I mean, directionally we're all headed in the same way, but there's a literal ocean between us that again WhatsApp messages and Zoom calls are not a a good proxy for face-to-face interaction and and this shared experience of the nuances that come with seeing people you know and love and and share culture with go through the same things that you are going through at the same time. And again, this isn't just something that is unique to foreigners living in a different country. I think anyone who has moved away from home or you have had parents who have moved away or siblings who have moved moved away, you've had to deal with this or continue to deal with this in your own way. I think this is just part of the human experience when it comes to the movement of people from one place to another. And quite frankly, it's just tough, you know. I mean, going back to my mixed metaphor where I jumped between the umbrella and the sandwich, it's strange to see your parents uh and your your aunts and uncles and the people that raised you as people like that has been a major paradigm shift for me. It's it's a it's a weird thing to say out loud, but the truth is for me, they've always just been my parents, my aunts, and my uncles. And so my relationship to them has always been predicated on a hierarchical structure that has been there, and you know, I've often taken it for granted because I grew up with it and I grew into it, and these people who made up that that upper layer of the sandwich, they were just people who were scared and and vulnerable, who made mistakes, who had their own vices and their own joys and their own sorrows, people who were curious, who were worried about any of the number of things that I obsess about now, you know, paychecks and and making sure that there's food on the table and that our kids are getting a good education and and different things like that. And so even when we were young and we saw our parents struggling as kids, we just always had it in the back of our mind that they somehow had the tools to figure it out. And to be fair, there is some truth to that, but now as a parent, I feel like I am not nearly as equipped as I could be to deal with the things that I deal with, but like those before me, I don't have the luxury of saying that I'm just not going to deal with it. What I have is the responsibility to figure it out on the fly. You know, as a parent, I have to know stuff. I have to answer questions that my kid asks me at any time of day that, you know, sometimes out of the blue, and I have to help my kid navigate social dynamics and the pressures of being a preteen, and then I have to deal with this steady stream of requests for things and clothes and toys. And these are the things that I would harass my mom for when I was my kid's age, so I get it. But but there's a there's a beautiful trade-off there as well, you know, like my kid is is rounding into form, she's becoming a person that I I genuinely love just hanging out with because she's funny and she's smart and and you know she likes good music and you know she has a a slightly cynical sense of humor. But that's kind of what parenting is, it's it's beautiful and terrible and hilarious and terrifying all at once and all the time. And and again, the stakes feel very high because even though you know we have some of those people who raised us still in our lives, we are more responsible for our own lives than ever. We are responsible for our own families, we're responsible for our kids, and we are responsible for our own health and our own changing bodies. And speaking of health, gravity has begun its slow pull and we don't bounce back the way we used to. I mean, there was a time when I could indulge in multiple vices in an evening and then go to sleep and wake up the next day and feel like a million bucks. And now when I do a fraction of that, I wake up feeling like a shilling or less than a shilling, if I'm being honest. You know, my relationship with food is changing because I have to be more mindful of the things that I put into my body. Um, my relationship with exercise is changing because even though I continue to work out uh every week, I have less time to do it. And I'll be honest, my body is just not as strong as it once was. And you know, even though I feel great for my age, and people tell me I look good for my age, it it it requires actually more discipline, more fastidiousness, and and even staving off the slings and arrows of aging requires more intentionality and more work. And all of these things are mixed together in this is seemingly unrelenting rhythm of of school drop-offs and and pickups and and meetings and events and sleepovers and hangouts for the kids and then uh volunteer work and and and freelance work and and doing a bleeping podcast. And on top of that, there's you know the workload with the job, and that is difficult on a good day because again, I have chosen to work for a nonprofit organization, and and that still does not even factor in coming home and being a good and attentive husband who's present and can engage with my wife, who's dealing with her own version of everything that I just talked about from her vantage point, because she has her career and she has her volunteer work and she has her family and and she's also dealing with raising our kid. And you know, I will be honest, there are times when all I want to do is just come home and sit on the couch and stare into the void, but it seems like there's very little time for that. And then when you layer in the constant encroachment of technology in our lives, that just adds an additional layer of stress and complexity. You know, my cell phone sits next to me on the couch and it it is always calling to me, even when I'm trying to focus on something that I'm watching or that I'm just sitting there thinking. Sometimes I pick my phone up without even realizing it. And you know, I try to be a little aware of why I do the things that I do, and I have realized that I literally grab my phone whenever I feel a cortisol spike. If I'm sitting thinking about work and I'm thinking about something stressful, I grab my phone as a way to help deal with that, and that feels like a terrible addiction. And I didn't realize that I was doing it until very recently. And it you know, when you mix all of that stuff together, it it is overwhelming, it feels lonely, it feels hard, feels really, really hard. And to be clear, the point of this episode is not to bum everybody out or to come across like I am especially cursed or anything like that. It is just to acknowledge that for my listeners and for my core audience, who uh you know my target audience I think is within that 35 to 65 year range. Um I think it's something that we can all relate to, whether we are just getting into it or we are on the back end of it, or like me, just squarely in the middle of it. So I hope that if you get anything from this episode, it is again just the ability to sit and acknowledge that what you are going through is not unique. You may be dealing with it in your own unique way, but it is something that we all go through. And I think that as technology simultaneously brings us closer together and pushes us apart, it is important to take stock and look inward, especially in this new reality where we struggle not to compare ourselves to the curated versions that we present online to each other, because that is the most ass backward construct, and it is the one of the most dangerous things that social media has put in front of us, literally, because we show sometimes a lot of times the best parts of our lives, and then instead of contextualizing the things that we see that other people post, which are again just the best parts of their lives, we somehow try to measure ourselves against an ideal that does not reflect the the entire breadth of the entire life that we are all living. So not to get off on a philosophical tangent about the ills of social media, but it is important for us to remember that when we are on social media, we are looking into each other's lives through a lens that only shows certain parts of the color spectrum of day-to-day life. And we don't need to measure ourselves against that and make ourselves feel terrible because we are not say we're not thriving or we are not on a beach somewhere or we're not on vacation somewhere or we don't have constant accolades coming at us every minute of every day. You know I wish there was more time on social media that was dedicated to showing and connecting us on a deep meaningful level like this where we actually talk about problems and we talk about things not as a way to be sad and moan and complain but as a way to find release to find catharsis in knowing that this is a shared experience and this is something that generations and generations of people before us have gone through and generations will go through after us. You know one of the things I enjoy asking people who are much older than me is if they know what day it is. And I don't ask that question to be disrespectful. I I am not making fun of them. I ask it because it's an acknowledgement that in hopefully in in in their retirement years that they are living a life where they are not governed by their calendar or or they are not constantly going from one commitment to another that they could wake up on a Thursday and it could feel like a Saturday where they are not beholden to the cycle of bills and the responsibilities that come with the opportunities that we have and so on and so forth. And I personally look forward to being of an age where I could just be where I could be self-centered again. Not selfish but just self-centered to be able to sit and focus inward where I can daydream and not feel the need to fill every waking moment with some productive act. So if there is something positive that we could take away from this is that there is now more research being put into these middle years. That there's more time and effort being spent on figuring out issues such as mental health for people in middle aged years and and physical health for for not only women but also for men and how we reckon with our changing bodies. These are all positive things and I think we should pay attention to them. I think we should lean into them. I think we should share them as much as possible and and you know negativity spreads like like weeds but positivity can spread too and sometimes it takes a little bit longer for the plants of positivity to take root. But once they do they are hardy plants and they they last and they can deal with a lot of external forces, negative external forces and that is where true resilience comes from and so let's all just be weeds of positivity. And in all seriousness I think if you take anything from this episode I urge you to take a moment to take a breath to give yourself some grace and to know that this part of your journey is temporary. That we are all just doing our best just like our parents and our aunts and our uncles and our teachers and our mentors and all the people that made up our support system did their best when they were faltering and they were trying to figure it out on the fly. So I hope this was insightful in some way or that you at least found one thing in here that you could relate to or maybe um it gave you an opportunity to go, you know what this guy is talking about all this stuff and I can't relate to any of it because my life is awesome and I don't have to deal with any of that stuff. And listen if you are that person man more power to you I and I mean that sincerely because as I get older I find that life is much sweeter when we wish other people the best. I I I genuinely want everybody to be happy and everybody to succeed even people who I may fundamentally disagree with. So it's hard stuff but in addition to the struggles and the tribulations there are many triumphs and the hard stuff allows me to appreciate the good things even more. I I feel joy more deeply I feel gratitude more deeply and I am thankful more and more every day to the people who took the time to raise me and to be the support system that I needed when I was growing up even though they were going through this really really tough middle period in their lives so that's all I have for tonight and I hope you all will tune in next time please like and subscribe and give us a five star rating and as we say in Trinidad we will talk later