The Second Half of Life

 

Jung was among the first to note that life seems to fall into two very different halves. The first focussed on the development and enhancement of our Ego and its mind-set: ambitions, plans, competitiveness, judgments about others, looking after oneself, one’s career, one’s family. The second half seems to be about undoing much of what has been accomplished in the first half in order to get at a deeper heart of human life.

 

It’s almost as if the first half of life is about creating the vessel in order to contain what the second half of life needs to focus on. Most writers on this topic suggest that one can’t complete the tasks of the second half of life with the tools of the trade of the first half of life.

 

Among the best reads on this subject is Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward. Rather than a summary of his book (Rohr is notoriously difficult to summarize, he is so full of pearls of wisdom on every page), this section will pull out his descriptions of the second half of life. As you read these reflections, ask yourself to what extent his description is accurate for you. If it is, celebrate and give thanks. If not, perhaps his description might help you shed first half of life assumptions in order to allow you to explore and enjoy true second half of life living.

 

Richard Rohr from Falling Upward,

2011, Jossey-Bass

 

  • Most of us think of the second half of life as largely about getting old, dealing with health issues, and letting go of our physical life, but the whole thesis of this book is exactly the opposite. What looks like falling van largely be experienced as falling upward and onward, into a broader and deeper world, where the soul has found its fullness, is finally connected to the whole, and lives inside the Big Picture. (153)
  • There is much evidence on several levels that there are at least two major tasks to human life. The first ask is to build a strong “container” or identity; the second is to find the content that the container is meant to hold. (xiii)
  • We are a “first-half-of-life culture,” largely concerns about surviving successfully.
    • We all try to do what seems like the task that life first hands us: establishing an identity, a home, relationships, friends, community, security, and building a proper platform for our only life. (xiii-xiv)
    • The task of the first half of life is to create a proper container for one’s life and answer the first essential questions: “What makes me significant?” “How can I support myself?” and “Who will go with me?” (1)
    • Our institutions and our expectations, including our churches, are almost entirely configured to encourage, support, reward, and validate the tasks of the first half of life.
    • The first half of life journey is always about externals, formulas, superficial emotions, flags and badges, correct rituals, Bible quotes, and special clothing, all of which largely substitute for actual spirituality. (13)
    • The first half of life culture values law, tradition, custom, authority, boundaries, and morality of some clear sort. These containers give us the necessary security, continuity, predictability, impulse control, and ego structure that we need, before the chaos of real life shows up. (25)
    • The first half of life container is constructed through impulse controls; traditions; group symbols; family loyalties; basic respect for authority; civil and church laws; and a sense of the goodness, value, and special importance of your country, ethnicity, and religion. (27)
    • There are reasons why this works in the first half of life, dominated as it is by ego: The ego cannot be allowed to be totally in charge throughout our early years or it takes over. The entirely open field leaves us the victim of too many options, and the options themselves soon push us around and take control. Law and structure put up some kind of limits to our infantile grandiosity, and prepare us for helpful relationships with the outer world. (37)

 

  • The transition to “second-half-of-life culture” requires some sort of “falling”:
    • Unless you build your first house well, you will never leave it. To build your house well is, ironically, to be nudged beyond its doors. (23)
    • We discover that we have spent our whole life climbing the ladder if success only to find when we get to the top that our ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. (xvii)
    • What we need to do at the transition point is to move from a “survival dance” to a “sacred dance.” (xviii)
    • The supposed achievements of the first half of life have to fall apart and show themselves to be wanting in some way, or we will not move further. (xix)
    • We need to learn that the language, concepts and assumptions of the first half of life and those of the second half are two different worlds. (xxvii)
    • A key task of the transition period is to “discharge our loyal soldier.”
      • This metaphor comes from a ritual used by the Japanese when a soldier is decommissioned: he is invited to close one phase of his life by thanking the skills and mindset he needed as a soldier and discharging it.
      • This is a rite of passage that is much needed as we move from first half to second half of life. (44) In biblical language, it is the Pharisee and the Older Son who are often our loyal soldiers.”
      • The loyal soldier has helped us get through the first half of life, but will be a hindrance in the second half.
      • Because that inner voice has often been so strong, (similar to Freud’s “superego”) it can be misinterpreted as the Voice of God – which it is not. It is only when we have discharged this voice of its responsibility that we can begin to hear the authentic Voice of God.
      • There is a deeper Voice of God, which we must learn to hear and obey in the second half of life. It will sound an awful lot like the voices of risk, of trust, of surrender, of soul, of destiny, of love, of an intimate stranger, of one’s deepest self. (48)
      • Discharging the loyal soldier will be necessary in order to find authentic inner authority, or what Jeremiah promised as “the law written in your heart. (Jer 31:33) (49)
      • When you first discharge your loyal soldier if will feel like a loss of faith or loss of self. But it is only the death of the false self and is often the very birth of the soul. (50)
    • “Falling”:
      • Sooner or later some event, person, death, idea, or relationship will enter your life that you simply cannot deal with, using your present skill set, your acquired knowledge, or your strong willpower. Spiritually speaking, you will be, you must be, lead to the edge of your own private resources. (65)
      • The genius of the biblical revelation is that it refuses to deny the dark side of things, but forgives failure and integrates falling to achieve its only promised wholeness. (59)
      • “Falling upward” is about finding a higher order inside constant disorder. (59)
    • “Falling upward”:
      • Falling upward is about finding the higher order in the midst of chaos; it is the “unified field” (an expression from the ultimate search of science). Only in this “unified field” beyond the chaos and the contradictions of this life can we find healing. (59)
      • “Sin” and “salvation” are correlative terms. Salvation is not sin perfectly avoided, as the ego would prefer; but in fact salvation is sin turned on its head and used in our favour. (60) You do not get rid of your sin until you have learned what it has to teach you. (61)
      • Any attempt to engineer or plan your own enlightenment is doomed to failure because it will be ego driven. You will see only what you have already decided to look for, and you cannot see what you are not ready or told to look for. Failure and humiliation force you to look where you never would otherwise. (66)
      • Falling, losing, failing, transgression, and sin are the pattern. They all lead toward home. (67) There will always be at least one situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand. (68)
      • Until we are led to the limits of our present game plan, and find it to be insufficient, we will not search out or find the real source, the deep well, or the constantly flowing stream. (67)
      • Before “truth sets you free,” it tends to make you miserable. (74)
      • This is not punishment: it is the way of all life. Most of nature seems to totally accept major loss, gross inefficiency, mass extinctions, and short life spaces as the price of life at all. (77)
    • “Hating family”:
      • One of Jesus’ more controversial statements was that, in order to follow him, we needed to “hate our family.”
      • In terms of first- and second-half of life transitions, this begins to make sense: as we move into the second half of life, we are very often at odds with our natural family and the dominant consciousness of our cultures. Many people are kept from moving into second-half lives because of the pious, immature, or rigid expectations of their first-half-of-life family. (83)
      • One of the major blocks to moving on is the “collective,” the crowd, our society, or our extended family and peers. What passes for morality or spirituality in the vast majority of people’s lives is the way everybody they grew up with thinks. Without very real inner work, most folk never move beyond it. It takes a huge push, much self-doubt, and some degree of separation for people to find their own soul and their own destiny apart from what Mom and Dad always wanted them to be. To move beyond family-of-origin stuff, local church stuff, cultural stuff, flag-and-country stuff is a path that few of us follow positively and with integrity. (83-4)
    • Losing oneself to find one’s soul:
      • This was another major admonition of Jesus. Again, the meaning becomes clear in the transition from first-half to second-half living.
      • Losing your life is, in essence, losing what we have called the “false self,” getting outside the dominion of our ego. Our false self is our role, our title, our personal image, that is largely a creation of our own mind and that of those around us who reward and punish us. To find our True Self, we must let go of ego, its expectations, its approach to life, its ambitions. (85)
    • Going “home”:
      • The Garden of Eden is a metaphor for “Home” – both the “home” we must leave and the home we yearn for. Paying attention to the desirous dissatisfaction within us and the yearning for a “home” that accepts us as we are provides the compass to the direction of the second half of life.
      • In John’s Gospel, Jesus is said to have promised us the “paraclete” after his departure. This is the Holy Spirit as advocate, as inner guide, who will speak for us against the negative voices of the dominant culture which wishes to keep us in its sphere of influence. (92)

 

  • The second half of life:
    • A Return to a Second naivete:
      • Paul Ricoeur, the great French philosopher spoke of three stages of life: a first naivete, in which we take things at face value, a critical phase, in which we question everything and try to find the complexity behind the initial simplicity, and a second naivete, during which we return to an acceptance of simplicity, but with the full recgnition of the complexity behind it. (108)
      • This second naivete has, at its heart a vote for some coherence, purpose, benevolence, and direction to the universe. Faith is somehow saying that God is one and God is good, and if so then all of reality must be that simple and beautiful too. (111)
      • Second naivete is not so much blindly optimistic as hopefully wise. (112)
      • This new coherence, a unified field inclusive of the paradoxes, is precisely what characterizes a second-half-of-life person. It feels like a return to simplicity after having learned from all the complexity. Finally, at last, one has lived long enough to see that “everything belongs,” even the sad, absurd and futile parts. (114)
      • In the second half of life, we can give our energy to making even the painful parts and the formally excluded parts belong to the now unified field – especially people who are different, and those who have never had a chance. (114)
    • The dark side of things:
      • We do not suggest that all is bright and beautiful in the second half of life. But even the darkness has a certain “luminosity” about it. The darkness can be held more creatively and with less anxiety. (117)
      • In the second half of life one has less and less need or interest in eliminating the negative or fearful, making again those old rash judgments, holding on to old hurts, or feeling any need to punish other people. Your superiority complexes have gradually departed in all directions. You do not fight these things anymore; they have just shown themselves too many times to be useless, ego based, counterproductive, and often entirely wrong. You learn to positively ignore and withdraw your energy from evil or stupid things rather than fight them directly. You have learned that most frontal attacks on evil just produce another kind of evil in yourself. (118)
      • Rules, law, and courthouses are good and necessary first-half-of-life institutions. In the second half, you try instead to influence events, work for change, quietly persuade, change your own attitude, pray, or forgive instead of taking things to court. (119)
    • Shadow-work:
      • By the second half of life we have been in regular unwelcome contact with our shadow self, which gradually detaches us from our not-so-bright “persona” that we have so diligently built up during the first half of life. (127)
      • Our “shadow” is what we refuse to see about ourselves, and what we do not want others to see. The more we are attached to our persona, the person we want others to see, and the more unaware we are of such a protected self-image, the more shadow self we are likely to have, and to have to uncover. (128)
      • Our persona is what most people want from us and reward us for, and what we choose to identify with. As we do our inner work, we begin to know that our self-image is nothing more than just that, and not worth protecting, promoting or denying. Our self-image is not substantial or lasting; it is just created out of our own mind, desire, and choice, and everybody else’s preferences for us. (129)
      • Spiritual maturity is largely a growth in seeing; and full seeing seems to take most of our lifetime, with a huge leap in the final years, months, weeks and days of life. (130)
      • Once you have faced your own hidden or denied self, there is not much to be anxious about anymore, because there is no fear of exposure – to yourself or others. The game is over – you are free. (134)
    • Self rules, rather than ego:
      • When you were young, you defined yourself by differentiating yourself; now you look for things you share in common. (120)
      • In the second half of life, it is good just to be part of the general dance. We do not have to stand out, make defining moves, or be better than anyone else on the dance floor. Life is more participatory than assertive, and there is no need for strong or further self-definition. (120)
      • I no longer have to prove that I or my group is the best, that my ethnicity is superior, that my religion is the only one that God loves, or that my role and place in society deserve superior treatment. I am not preoccupied with collecting more goods and services; quite simply, my desire and effort is to pay back, to give back to the world a bit of what I have received. (121)
      • We do not have string and final opinions about everything, every event, or most people, as much as we allow things and people to delight us, sadden us, and truly influence us. We no longer need to change or adjust other people to be happy ourselves. Ironically, we are more than ever in a position to change people, but we don’t need to. We do what we are called to do, and then try to let go of the consequences. (123)
      • What we do, we do out of our deepest passion. Now our life and our delivery system are one. (123)
    • Religion and church:
      • For some reason, religious people tend to confuse the means with the actual goal. In the first half of life you tend to think that God really cares about your exact posture, the exact day of the week for public prayer, the authorship and wordings of your prayers, and other such things. Once your life has become a constant communion in the second half of life, you know that all the techniques, formulas, sacraments, and practices were just a dress rehearsal for the real thing – life itself – which can actually become a constant intentional prayer. Your conscious and loving existence gives glory to God. (xxviii-xxix)
      • The second half of life places us in a very different relationship with the institutions that were so important in the first half, including our church. (139)
      • The ego – and most institutions – demand a tit-for-tat universe, structured and organized universe governed by rules, while the soul swims in a sea of abundance, grace and freedom, which cannot always be organized. (140)
      • So, don’t expect or demand from organizations and groups what they usually cannot give. Doing so will make you needlessly angry and reactionary. They must, and will be concerned with identity, boundaries, self-maintenance, self-perpetuation, and self-congratulation. This is their nature and purpose. (141)
    • “Both-and” thinking – non-dualism:
      • In the second half of life, we no longer use ego-driven logic of up and down, right or wrong, with me or against me. Dualism is all about “compare and contrast,” all very useful in first-half tasks. It helps to define boundaries. (146-7)
      • Non-dualism seems to always say “Yes but also no,” or “this” but also “that.” It lives with ambiguity, with paradox, with contradiction, with mystery. We see wholes and not just parts. (150-1)