By the time you hit 50, you’ve probably been to more funerals than weddings. You know the right tie to wear, where to sit, when to look solemn, and when to nod sympathetically at awkward buffet chatter. You’ve learned, possibly the hard way, that grief isn’t a thunderstorm. It’s a fog. It doesn’t crash in with drama. It lingers, seeps, and sometimes settles in for longer than we’d like to admit.

Julian Barnes wrote a book called The Sense of an Ending. At its heart is a question that haunts many of us in middle age: What do we do with the people we’ve lost, especially when we also lose the neat narratives we once had about them, and about ourselves?

The protagonist, Tony, fumbles through the wreckage of his past, realizing that the “truth” he’s held onto was perhaps only ever a comfortable fiction. Sound familiar? Middle age is when the stories we told ourselves in our 20s begin to show their cracks. And nothing fractures those old stories quite like grief.

But here’s the uncomfortable bit: grief is not just about death. It’s also about endings, of friendships, careers, marriages, dreams. And unlike the movies, there’s no clean-cut narrative arc. No musical montage of catharsis and rediscovery. No “closure”. Often, it’s just… you, staring at the ceiling at 2am, wondering what the hell happened.

Everything Is Going to be All Right

Enter Derek Mahon with his wry, defiant whisper of a poem: “Everything is Going to be All Right.” It’s a title that sounds like something your mate mutters while the tent collapses in a thunderstorm. But here’s the genius: Mahon isn’t offering a naive reassurance. He’s not saying “Cheer up, mate!” while slapping you on the back. He’s saying, even now (especially now) … breathe. The world will go on. The sun rises. The kettle still boils. Life insists.

This is not toxic positivity. It’s acceptance, that underrated virtue men are often taught to sidestep in favour of action. We’re good at problem-solving. We’re less good at just sitting with pain. At acknowledging, “This hurts. I can’t fix it. But I can live with it.”

Acceptance Is Not Defeat

Let’s be clear: acceptance is not the same as giving up. It’s not rolling over. It’s looking grief in the eye and saying, “I see you. You’re part of me now. Let’s walk.” Acceptance gives us back agency. It lets us rewrite the script, even when we can’t rewrite the ending.

Tony in The Sense of an Ending fails, in many ways, to accept the truth until it’s too late. But that failure is instructive. It tells us that the price of avoidance is often heavier than the pain itself.

In our 40s, 50s, and beyond, we don’t have time to waste pretending everything’s fine. The armour gets heavy. The unspoken grief builds like plaque in the arteries. But acceptance? That’s a release valve. A way to say: “I carry this, but it doesn’t carry me.”

Grief as an Invitation

Here’s the real kicker: grief, for all its brutality, can be a gateway. It reminds us, often rudely, of what matters. It strips away the superficial. The emails. The status. The petty squabbles over whose turn it was to empty the dishwasher.

Grief can be a teacher. If we let it.

It teaches humility. That we’re not in control.

It teaches presence. That the moment, not the plan, is where life happens.

It teaches love. That saying it matters more than proving it.

And if we’re brave, grief teaches us to live, not in spite of our losses, but more richly because of them. Grief teaches us that the world, in its everyday rhythm, is calling us to wake up, to participate, to be present.

A Quiet Rebellion

So what do we do, us men of a certain vintage, with our aching hearts and greying temples?

We talk. We share. We let ourselves cry, or at least wince in public.

We sit with our sadness, but we also rise with it. We see our vulnerability not as a weakness, but an invitation to engage with the world around us.

So when someone says, “You OK?” we try telling the truth, even just a sliver of it.

Because everything is not OK. But everything will be all right.

Not perfect. Not painless. But all right, in that slow, surprising, deeply human way.

Everything is Going to be All Right

How should I not be glad to contemplate

the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window

and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?

There will be dying, there will be dying,

but there is no need to go into that.

The poems flow from the hand unbidden

and the hidden source is the watchful heart.

The sun rises in spite of everything

and the far cities are beautiful and bright.

I lie here in a riot of sunlight

watching the day break and the clouds flying.

Everything is going to be all right.

Derek

 Mahon,from Selected Poems

There’s a reason the podcast Don’t Let the Old Man In resonates with thousands of men in their 50s. It speaks to the quiet war many fight against obsolescence, irrelevance, and a determination to navigate life’s crossroads with clarity and confidence. And likewise, if you’re reading this, you haven’t given up. You’re still curious. Maya Angelou once said, “If you’re always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” Midlife career change isn’t about being extraordinary. It’s about being aligned—with yourself.

Stephen Keys of the Producer of Don’t Let the Old Man In podcast. Listen on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or wherever you tune in. Find more thoughts on living gracefully (and disgracefully) in the second half of life at The Wisdom Vault, on LinkedIn, Substack and even (!) Instagram.