Death anxiety--the conscious or, more often, unconscious awareness of that which threatens our tenuous existence--can be a positive, even creative force, spurring us to seize the moment, mobilize action, foreswear procrastination, roll the proverbial dice, find purpose and fight furiously against annihilation despite its inevitability. As Dylan Thomas poetically puts it,

Do not go gentle into that goodnight
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Death anxiety, when courageously met rather than chemically or otherwise neutralized, denied or repressed as we stare at sixty, can serve to spur creativity, solidify one's sense of self, and significantly strengthen spirituality. Indeed, spirituality or religiosity revolves centrally around the existential dread of everything in life that brings suffering, disease, decrepitude and, finally, death. The quality of life after sixty depends in part on how we deal with death, the significance we assign to it, and the attitude we take toward it. Psychologist Erik Erikson characterized this stage of life as leading to either a sense of integrity or despair (see my prior post on "clinical despair") regarding how we have conducted our lives thus far, and depending upon how we come to terms with what we have or have not yet accomplished as we approach death. Addiction, nilhilism, consumerism, hedonism and desperately hanging on to youth are all ways of avoiding rather than creatively encountering death anxiety.

In this sense, staring at sixty is similar to what psychiatrist Carl Jung famously called a mid-life crisis. In the mid-life crisis, starting archetypally around thirty-five to forty-five, we ideally consciously yet sometimes unconsciously take stock of what we have and have not yet accomplished, consider how satisfied or dissatisfied we are with our current lifestyle, reassess our identity, dreams, desires and values, and either continue, modify or radically alter our course accordingly as we enter the second half of life. But it is incorrect to confuse staring at sixty with classic mid-life crisis, though this is a common misperception. These are two distinct rites de passage. At mid-life there is theoretically and statistically still time to do those things we haven't yet done and become more the kind of person we wish to. While a mid-life or "half-time" crisis forces us to decide how to live out the second half or afternoon of life, staring at sixty, the archetypal sunset or "end-game" crisis, calls for deciding how to deal with, as Dylan Thomas says, " the dying of the light." A full blown mid-life crisis can be chaotic, terrifying and profoundly disorienting. (See, for example, my prior post about Jung's own devastating mid-life crisis documented subjectively in his Red Book) But staring at sixty can make a mid-life crisis pale in comparison.

Turning sixty brings a burning urgency and powerful poignancy commonly missing in the garden variety mid-life crisis. By sixty, the bulk of our life has already been lived, and there is little time left to change course. It may simply be too late to make up for missing out on certain life experiences, or just not physically or practically feasible. Opportunities and potentialities that were still possible at mid-life have, at sixty, dried up or disappeared. Staring at sixty is the ultimate existential confrontation with limitation, finitude, loss and, finally, nothingness. At sixty, we can no longer avoid, deny or ignore our own mortality, typically having been confronted with the sobering, slow decline and death of parents, siblings, mentors, colleagues and friends. It is a perilous spiritual crisis par excellence, and the outcome is always psychologically uncertain. While Erikson's classic description of this stage as an inner battle between despair or integrity has merit, it seems to me that perhaps an equally apt aspect of this precarious passage is the basic question of courage vs. cowardice: Can we find the courage within ourselves to willingly confront, overcome or accept what inevitably lies before us? Or will we cower in fear and hunker down or despairingly retreat into self-deception, avoiding, distorting or denying reality in the daunting and mystifying face of what disturbingly awaits us?

There is a natural or teleological tendency toward wholeness within us which strives toward balance, compensation and completion, even as we enter our sixties and beyond. And we now face new opportunities and possibilities perhaps not available to us previously. Some doors close permanently by sixty, while others still wait to be opened. Sixty is a last chance to seek more balance, wholeness and integrity in life. Not merely by looking back, reviewing our life and reconciling ourselves to the past, but by looking forward to what we may still be able to accomplish, contribute and experience in life. Two of my former mentors, Drs. Rollo May and June Singer, lived well into their eighties, and remained active, creative and productive professionally and personally. Rollo May, for example, published his magnum opus, Love and Will (1969) at sixty, and his culminating contribution, The Cry for Myth, at the advanced age of eighty-two. Not all of us who reach sixty will ever see eighty. But however much time we have left is precious and must be well spent. And that then becomes the crucial question when staring at sixty: How to use the limited time left to us in the most meaningful, satisfying, productive and fulfilling fashion possible. To see sixty as the start of yet another chapter remaining to be written before the book comes to a conclusion. A last opportunity to try to leave the best legacy we can to loved ones, students, society and posterity. To discover and pursue our destiny.

Is death a door or a dead-end? Whatever one's religious beliefs, traditional spiritual teachings tell us that any continued existence beyond death will be influenced by what we do here in this lifetime and on this earthly plane. For atheists, the conviction that there can be no continued existence after physical death makes what we do with life prior to death absolutely paramount. So, either way, the unvarnished awareness of death's reality is essential for spurring on personal and spiritual growth in the form of more detachment from the material world, greater ethical and moral development, enhanced self-acceptance, learning to embrace both the good and evil sides of existence, cultivating caring relationships, increased creativity, and a finer appreciation of the present moment, beauty, and life's awesome mysteries.