Second
Half
“[In the
second half of life] 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.”
Richard
Rohr (Falling Upward)
The first half of life is
all about physical expansion—gathering, owning, being successful,
proving oneself in whatever arena one pursues, whether in love or the
marketplace. We are building ego-strength to carry us through the
difficulties that life will hand us. The second half of life,
however, is about giving away all that cumbersome accumulation, and
expanding in ways that are not physical. The first half is all about
ensuring safety, and the second half is about acknowledging doubt.
Sometimes, we do not cross the threshold from one to the other, and
that creates rigidity and supports fear.
There is real freedom in
the second half of life to expand inwardly and spiritually if we can
let go of our need to quash doubt, to be right and to be superior. In
his wonderful book on the subject, Jungian Analyst James Hollis
wrote: “The suppression of doubt ensures that we are left with a
partial truth, a one-sided value, a prejudicial narrowing of the
richness of life.” (Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life)
What we find when we are unable to let go of our rigid beliefs is
that they become ever more solidified—fear amps up, and the
messages we give ourselves become even more bizarre. If we don't
realize what we are doing, we ensure that the second half of life
will not be a time of spiritual growth and expansion, but a
frightful march toward death. Hollis wrote, “That of which we
are not aware, owns us.” The task of the second half of life
can be summed up in two words: Let go. We will never gain wisdom if
we cannot let go of absolutes.
This week, as we are
calling up the things we are thankful for, let us list doubt among
them. Assurance is not wisdom, rightness and wrongness are not
absolutes. We are not wise if we insist that there is only one right
way. There is true wisdom in being able to acknowledge that we don't
have all the answers, that the difference between right and wrong is
ambiguous at best. In the words of James Hollis, “...the person
in the second half of life comes to a more sober wisdom based on a
humbled sense of personal limitations and the inscrutability of the
world.”
May
your Thanksgiving be blessed, not only with food and family, but with
wisdom as well.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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