A Reason for Our Angst
At some point, we, as human beings, become aware of this gap between
our beliefs and our experience and begin to wrestle with our questions
about how to live authentically. The desire to enter those questions,
and as the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, to "live into the
answers," usually occurs in mid to later life--though not always.
God created us in such a remarkable way that we are actually wired
for growth that leads us closer and closer to communion with God--to
knowledge of God, not merely about God, a knowing of the heart, not
just the head. Evidence of this wiring (our hearts are restless
until they find their rest in thee, according to St. Augustine) is
found in what most of us experience around mid-life. We get this
yearning to live with more authenticity, and if we respond to that
yearning (instead of shoving it back down again), it can be an
unsettling enterprise, not only to ourselves, but also to those in
our relational orbit.

--an excerpt from "Being Real: Spiritual Tools for Authentic Living"
by Linda Douty