At 70, I faced a crisis about the meaning of life – here’s how I overcame it

Friends of similar age, some still working, some not, do not necessarily have the same disposition as me. Many of the fully retired ones are lapping up their lives, socialising, travelling, grandkid-sitting, going to the odd pottery class and exercising more than ever before. There are certainly times when I envy them, their acceptance that they no longer have anything to prove. I crave something more. Or perhaps not more, but different.

Let’s say I was having an existential crisis. Words like ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ swirled around in my head. Death figured, too. It’s coming, after all, and although I could theoretically live to 100 I’ve also already had my three score years and ten, so who knows which way it will go. If time is running away I want to go all guns firing into that good night.

As the gloom grew, I thought perhaps I needed to see a therapist. I’d heard about existential therapy and decided to do a shallow dive into the subject. What I found out was that existential therapy is about the very things I was grappling with, that it focuses on the here and now (rather than always delving into your past), and recognises anxiety and uncertainty are part of life, not troublesome pathologies that need to be cured. 

It takes as a given that there is no essential point to life, especially from an atheistic perspective, and that if we are looking for meaning and purpose, which all of us need, it’s up to us to find those things in the choices we make. 

A dear friend, who is a psychotherapist, suggested that while therapy might be useful, doing a course on the basics of counselling and psychotherapy, studying the various thinkers – from Freud and Jung to Carl Rogers, Adler, Melanie Klein and Winnicott – who have changed our perspective on the self, might be more up my street. 

I’d also have to engage in learning basic counselling skills, role-playing the parts of therapist and client with my fellow students. Without too much agonising, I thought why not give it a go? 

So that’s how it started. Every Thursday taking the tube to Baker Street and wandering across a bridge by a lovely lake in Regent’s Park, seeing the seasons change as I walked toward the entrance of Regent’s University, right there in the park itself. Just beeping myself through the gate with my student pass made me smile every time. A student pass! A thrill in itself.

2023 was a year in which, at the beginning, I kept apologising to my fellow students for being at least 20 years senior to the oldest of them, and up to four whole decades older than some. I could have been a grandmother to one or two. But by the end of it I realised that the majority of them were quite happy to share a drink with me in the pub, and if nothing else that would have been enough. 

Although this was just a foundation course, it was emotionally if not especially intellectually challenging and I quickly gained new respect for the rigorous training that psychotherapists, with all the official credentials to their name, have to undergo. Anyone can call themselves a counsellor, and the profession is woefully underregulated, but those with UKCP or BACP accreditation have several years of study and practise behind them. 

I also felt privileged to be exposed to a group of open-hearted people who were willing – and indeed encouraged – to open up with their personal stories, and expose their vulnerabilities. 

Sometimes I was moved to tears by stories I heard, stories that will stay in that college room, and my heart, long after my studies have ended. I think of us in terms of intimate strangers. People we know perhaps more about than we do about some of our friends, because in this setting the bravado falls away, and our true selves start to be revealed.